TCS' 80,000 skills gap; world's largest 'AI-ready workforce' and more

India's largest IT services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is facing a significant challenge filling a massive number of open positions. During a town hall earlier this month, the global operations head of TCS' resource management group (RMG) Amar Shetye revealed that the company currently has thousands of open positions that it is not able to fill due to the skills gap.
Shetye put the number at 80,000. For those unaware, the RMG team at TCS is responsible for allocation of available resources to various projects across the company and in case of any shortfall, fill such requirements through contractors. These contractors are on the roles of the hiring agencies and may or may not be hired as permanent staff by the company.
Skills gap, here means, a mismatch between the skills possessed by employees and those their roles demand.
An employee who attended the townhall anonymously told TOI, "We were told that either skillsets or employee aspirations are not matching project requirements. However, at TCS, no associate is forced to take on a project if they are not comfortable with it."
"He told us that we should consider ourselves fortunate that the firm is not laying off employees for not being mapped to any project unlike other firms," another employee on the bench added.
The company’s recent annual report revealed that 33% of job requirements are currently being met by grooming existing talent.
"TCS has the world’s largest AI-ready workforce"
Post the announcement of fourth quarter results, TCS CEO K Krithivasan said that the company has built one of the largest artificial-intelligence-ready workforces in the world. "TCS is currently working over 200 engagements in GenAI with our clients and foresees a promising pipeline of future work across all industries," he wrote.
TCS posted strong performance in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2024-25. "This is a quarter of strong deals and execution for us. Continuous focus on operational excellence helped us achieve a 26% operating margin." The management also said that deal wins were "across markets, industries and geographies."
The Mumbai-headquartered company said that it had signed new deals totalling $13.2 billion in the fourth quarter, which is one of the highest ever for the company even as it signalled a cautious turnaround for the industry. The company added that the pain may be bottoming out and FY25 will be better than FY24.
TCS's Gen-AI deal pipeline is said to have touched $900 million. “Our Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) pipeline has surged to $900 million, marking a doubling in value. The Total Contract Value (TCV) of the deal comprises primarily standard-sized deals, with the exception of a significant win secured in Q3," the company said in its earnings report.
TCS sees headcount fall first time in 19 years
TCS' full year headcount fell for the first time in 19 years. The company reported a quarter-on-quarter decline of 1,759 in its headcount for the fourth quarter of FY2024-25. TCS concluded the fourth quarter with a workforce totaling 601,546 employees, with women comprising 35.6% of the total.