April 18, 2006 18:11 ISTFor the first time ever, India's second largest software exporter Infosys Technologies would aggressively scout for talent in US universities, from where it would hire 300 fresh graduates.
"We will hire 300 fresh graduates from US universities and train them in India for making them a part of our global workforce," Nandan Nilekani, managing director and CEO of Infosys Technologies said at the CII Annual General Meeting.
He said that the company has been hiring foreign nationals but it would be for the first time that it would hire on such a large scale directly from US universities.
The fresh graduates hired from US universities would take over technology and management functions. The company would train them for nine months at its Mysore traning facility, which is the largest of its kind in the world.
Overall the company plans to hire 25,000 people in 2006-07 to take its headcount to above 75,000.
Of the 25,000 people that Infosys plans to hire, about 18, 500 would be absorbed by the parent company (Infosys) and the balance 6,500 by its BPO subsidiary Progeon.
The company hired 22,868 people in 2005-06, taking its total number of employees to 52,715. There's another feather in the much-adorned IIT cap.
The United Kingdom-based Times Higher Education Supplement has ranked the Indian Institutes of Technology as the third best technology universities in the world for 2005.
In a statement, THES said: "Our peer review of the world's top technology universities shows that in 2004, the high praise for the Indian Institutes of Technology was no fluke. Up to third position in 2005 from fourth place last year, the IITs are a source of Indian national pride as well as innovation and wealth."
The technologists among our peer review panel regard Imperial College London as the UK's hottest university, ahead of Cambridge University and fifth in the world, the statement adds.
The rankings, THES said, is dominated by the United States, no surprise for the world's top high-technology nation. It appears 26 times in the top 101 institutions in our list. For once, this area is one in which Harvard University ranks outside the elite, appearing in 21st place.
"Our definition of technology covers the main engineering disciplines including information and communications technology. Viewed alongside the tables for science subjects, our rankings suggest it is possible for a university to be strong in science but not technology, and vice versa," THES said.
The top science institutions, Cambridge and Oxford universities, cut less of a dash in engineering and IT, placed 6 and 13, respectively, while the IITs come 36th in science despite being third in technology. Overall, 10 of the top 20 institutions in science are rated by our peer review panel as being in the top 20 for technology and IT.
In contrast to science, many technology academics appear rarely in the world's top research publications. This applies especially to institutions outside the English-speaking world but also to some well-rated universities in Australia and elsewhere. It suggests that big US institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley generate not only highly regarded papers but also many commercial innovations and spin-offs, THES said in a media statement.
