Wipro starts online assessment test for new hires; Capgemini hikes freshers salary by 20%

IT firm Wipro has launched an online assessment test called the Elite National Level Talent Hunt (NLTH) for fresher hires in order to reach out to a larger number of graduates across the country, a media report said. According to The Times of India, the 140-minute test checks the candidate’s aptitude, written communication skills and online programming capabilities. “While we continue to visit a good number of campuses, we also wanted to take a wider look at the talent pool available across. To be able to address and attract those people, we chose this national-wide test as an alternative hiring channel. The idea is to increase our whole catchment area and also build a digital skills repository,” Wipro president & chief operating officer Bhanumurthy BM was quoted as saying by the newspaper. [caption id=“attachment_77185” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image: Reuters[/caption] Meanwhile, French IT firm Capgemini has raised fresher salary by 20 percent at around Rs 3,80,000, according to Business Standard. The company is also planning to hire around 25,000 more people to its India team “on a gross basis, including freshers as well as lateral hires.” In June, Capgemini, which employs half of its global workforce in the country, said they had hit a peak in terms of transferring jobs from the developed markets to India, which might cap local hiring at last year’s pace. With some of its over 1 lakh employees being unhappy on wage hikes, the company had said, “the base salaries” have grown 6 percent this year and it would prefer to give higher wages to those with the skills for the future rather than have a uniform approach. “With 1,00,000 people, we have the kind of stature we need in India. We are not looking for more stature here in India,” Capgemini chairman and group chief executive Paul Hermelin had said. “We have progressively replaced a lot of French, Dutch and Americans with Indians. Even if we are not growing that much, in India we are growing at 20 percent (in headcount). Today, we’ve reached the level of Indian sourcing that we need,” Hermelin added. --With inputs from PTI