Infosys’ first U.S. recruits start in India

In an effort to create what it calls a "diversified, global workforce," Infosys Technologies Ltd., the $2 billion India-based IT-services company, has launched its new Global Talent Program.

The program involves recruiting recent graduates from countries in which Infosys operates. The first phase of the plan, which started this past July, involves 126 new recruits from the United States who are studying in a customized education program in the company's facilities in Mysore. Infosys is headquartered in Bangalore.

"We wanted to make [these recruits] understand our processes," said Bikramjit Maitra, vice president of human resource development for Infosys. "[For a] global delivery model [it's] how you work in a virtual team and in a cross-cultural team. You learn the best by learning side by side with Indian colleagues."

According to Maitra, approximately 80 percent of Infosys's 58,000 employees are in India while 65 percent of the company's business comes from the United States and most projects are done in virtual teams.

Participants in the current talent program will return to the United States after six months of training and will work with Infosys's U.S. clients.

"They can take this exposure and go back to the United States and work with clients," said Maitra. "They can implement what they learned in a virtual model."

Maitra also noted that because so many of Infosys's employees come from different cultures, this training in which the American participants learn how their Indian colleagues work and "understand their mindsets" is the "best diversity training one can get."

"We are creating teams which are cross cultural in nature," he said.

So far, the program is working, noted Maitra.

"The way they are learning and taking classroom training and the way they are mixing with each other is how we anticipated it happening," he said.

The program is fully residential with both the U.S. recruits and local Indian employees staying in the same campus.

Infosys recruited participants from 82 U.S. colleges including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Notre Dame University, Drexel University, Columbia University and University of California - Berkeley. Maitra said the company went after both engineering school graduates and liberal arts majors. The one thing the company was looking for, said Maitra was "learnability."

"Technology changes so often and they go from one client to another," he said. "They need to use knowledge from one environment in another. They need the ability to learn a knowledge and utilize [it]. We believe that's an extremely important attribute of an individual that will be successful."

The recruits will all work in the delivery side of Infosys's business.

Currently, the company said the plans are for the program to increase to 300 participants by next year. Maitra said the company anticipates the program will continue to increase but how much bigger has not yet been determined.

"This is a pilot," he said. "We are very enthusiastic about the results. This could start a significant trend," he added.

Original story

Brand Building Through Internship - Infosys's InStep Program

Driven by the need to go truly global, some Indian IT companies have initiated an internship programme for international students, in the hope that they will be unpaid brand ambassadors.

IT major Infosys has put in place a structured programme for global internship since 1999 and it has been tremendously successful in helping the "brand Infosys", while taking care of global recruitment needs too. The programme is called InStep which provides a platform for students from top academic institutions around the world to work on live technical and business projects, ranging from application development to business consulting in Infosys' offices worldwide.

The other benefits of the programme, apart from the stipend, include airfare, accommodation in a fully furnished apartment, food, and transportation within the city.

InStep interns work on diverse live projects, ranging from application development to business consulting, in practices that include corporate planning, education and research, enterprise solutions and software engineering and technology labs. These are projects that represent and impact the Infosys core practices.

Interns have been part of various groups that have worked on high-end projects. Some of the interns have even authored papers on their work at Infosys and their papers have been accepted by internationally reputed journals.

125 interns

This year, Infosys Technologies, as part of its Global Internship Programme, is taking 125 interns at its Bangalore campus.

In keeping with academic cycles across different countries, these students will arrive on the campus in a staggered manner all through the year.

The intensive eight to 24-week internship programme gives select students hands-on experience on developing latest software services and solutions in Infosys' global development centres.

InStep, which began with 300 applications for 14 positions six years ago, received over 12,000 applications for 125 positions this year, from about 80 prestigious universities across the world including those in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, South Korea and the Philippines.

The InStep programme is now increasingly being endorsed by placement faculty and professors from leading schools.

Enriched for life

Antoinette Schoar, Associate Professor of Finance at MIT Sloan, validated the Infosys experience, stating, "Most students are keen to experience globalisation and its business benefits firsthand. Infosys is today seen as an internship destination of choice since it allows students the opportunity to undertake challenging assignments that allow them to gain an understanding of emerging markets.

"InStep also uniquely combines an experience of in-depth corporate learning with the opportunity to learn from the cultural ethos of India. This leaves students enriched for life."