“A fresher’s first job is no longer a training ground, it’s an experience zone.” Atul Sahgal, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Talent Acquisition — Tech and IOA, Cognizant, captures the essence of a hiring mindset that is both empathetic and future-forward. With over 25 years in the talent acquisition space, Atul leads with a refreshing blend of business acumen and human instinct. At Cognizant, recruitment is not a transaction; it is a transformation, starting as early as the fifth semester through co-owned curricula, hackathons, and mentorship-driven bootcamps. Whether it is designing readiness over demanding it, or preparing hiring teams for today’s ‘expectation economy,’ Atul’s approach reflects Cognizant’s commitment to building not just careers, but confidence.
We are seeing a generation that is less interested in what jobs exist and more curious about why they exist. Could you reflect on how Cognizant India is rethinking entry-level job design to match this shift in the student mindset?
Yes, it is truly inspiring to witness this change. Entry-level talent is increasingly interested in understanding the impact of their work and their overall contribution to the ‘big picture.’
In response to this evolving mindset, Cognizant India is prioritising purpose-driven roles and career growth for today’s students. As we transition from generic hiring to skill-based or service-line driven hiring, we are focusing on providing more clarity on how each role contributes to larger organisational goals and societal benefits, thereby offering a sense of meaning and fulfilment to new hires.
We follow a differential hiring model to recruit and train students with varying skill levels and exposure to IT. Currently, we have three hiring categories for engineering graduates: GenC, GenC Next, and GenC Pro. Engineering graduates in the GenC Next and GenC Pro categories possess high-end skills and product expertise. Additionally, we recruit three-year arts and science graduates primarily for specific units. We also hire graduates from B-Schools, design schools, and with niche domain skills like B. Pharm, Chartered Accountancy, etc.
Recognising that entry-level talent seeks a career, not just a job, we provide them with clear career paths when they are onboarded. Additionally, we offer in-house learning opportunities to transition between roles, upskill, and accelerate their careers.
How is your organisation leveraging interdisciplinary talent in its early hiring programmes? Are you seeing patterns of hybrid skills emerge?
At Cognizant, we recognise the value of interdisciplinary talent in our early hiring programs. We actively recruit students from diverse educational backgrounds, including not only students from circuit and non-circuit branches of engineering, but also those from Arts, Science, and Commerce. This approach allows us to tap into a wide range of skills and perspectives, enriching our talent pool.
While technology is at the core of every specialisation, we also target specific domains and functional skills aligned with business requirements. For example, we offer opportunities for MBA graduates and individuals with specialised skills such as design, Chartered Accountancy, and pharmacy. This diversity ensures that we can meet the unique needs of our clients across different industries.
While leveraging existing talent, we are also enabling such interdisciplinary learning through our flagship programs like the Nurture Partner Network. We provide one-credit courses through academic partnerships that combine both technical and non-technical aspects, enabling a multidisciplinary approach. For instance, we are training biotechnology graduates in programming languages.
Moreover, we prioritise social impact and responsible innovation by incorporating ethical perspectives and the humanities into our training programs. This comprehensive approach not only equips our new hires to contribute meaningfully to their roles but also aligns with our broader organisational goals.
What role does data play in helping you design differentiated hiring tracks, say, for engineers versus coders or tech specialists versus product thinkers?
By leveraging data, we are studying the unique skills, experiences, and attributes that are most indicative of success in each specific role. For instance, our data might show that engineers who excel in problem-solving and have a solid grasp of algorithms tend to thrive in their positions. Conversely, coders with deep knowledge of a particular programming language and framework might do better in certain roles. This is also the foundational understanding behind our differential hiring system of GenC, GenC Pro, and GenC Next.
Our hiring process involves multiple stages that allow us to evaluate candidates across various dimensions and accordingly hire them for the roles that best align with their capabilities. Access to skill credentials, industry, domain, and product certifications, as well as innovations showcased through hackathons, helps us identify, engage, nurture, and source talent for specialised hiring.
I’d like to add that data provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of our hiring strategies. By tracking metrics such as time-to-hire, candidate satisfaction, and long-term employee performance, we can continuously refine our processes. This iterative approach allows us to adapt and improve our strategies based on what the data reveals is working best, ultimately leading to a more efficient and effective hiring process.
How can industries move from demanding readiness to designing readiness, perhaps through co-owned curriculum, skilling bootcamps, or semester-embedded projects?
Understanding the dynamic nature of today’s talent landscape, driven by evolving industry needs, is crucial. To ensure that academia keeps pace with these changes, building a robust industry-academia ecosystem is essential.
At Cognizant, we have established a scalable and structured ecosystem through the formation of Regional Councils (RCs). Led by Cognizant leaders, these RCs nurture knowledge and innovation at our partner colleges beginning as early as the 5th semester. They facilitate seamless talent skilling and sourcing through various pre- and post-hire campus engagements.
Some of our flagship programs include:
- Nurture Partner Network: We have established academic partnerships to build talent pools in niche skills by adopting batches of AI/ML engineering stream students. This initiative includes designing one-credit courses, profiling, hackathons, and hiring, aiming to create a ready-to-deploy talent pool of engineering students. By shifting skilling to campuses, we ensure that students are industry-ready upon graduation.
- Digital Nurture: This program pre-assesses and deep-skills final-year students in areas like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Full-stack Java, and Cybersecurity, hiring them through a structured process. Using a multi-touchpoint intervention model, we offer a seamless learning experience through a four-stage approach. Successful candidates are offered internships, leading to full-time employment.
- CARE (Cognizant Academia Research Ecosystem) for Industry Innovation: This program exposes students to futuristic digital technologies, business use cases, industrialised processes, and methodologies. It enables students to collaborate and solve real-world problems by applying the latest technologies through innovation.
These examples demonstrate how we collaborate with campuses to enhance skill readiness. Cognizant leaders also serve as advisors on the Boards of Studies and participate in the Academy Council Meetings, providing valuable insights to develop industry-aligned curricula.
Ink Dive: People, Purpose, Progress: The Evolving Ethos of Cognizant’s Workforce Strategy
A fresher’s first job today is no longer a training ground but an experience zone. How does Cognizant India partner with academia not just to evaluate talent but to elevate the campus-to-corporate transition?
Cognizant has always played a role beyond that of a recruiter, particularly when it comes to engineering campuses across India. In India, our Generation Cognizant (GenC) Recruitment programs serve as a strategic bridge between Cognizant and the academic institutions.
Through the establishment of Regional Councils, led by Cognizant leaders, we have established strong partnerships with over 500 top-ranked colleges and universities across India. These partnerships are designed to engage with entry-level talent at multiple touchpoints throughout their campus-to-corporate journey.
Our flagship programs empower students, faculty, and other academic stakeholders, preparing them for the ever-evolving technology landscape while positioning Cognizant as an employer of choice.
With programs like Cognizant Academia Research Ecosystem (CARE) for industrial innovation and Digital Nurture Technoverse, we have been expanding our innovation ecosystem to campuses. We run hackathons, conduct joint research, and provide a platform for students to gain mentorship from Cognizant SMEs while working on real-time use cases.
To ensure holistic development, we also offer one-credit courses that focus on both hard and soft skills, preparing students to face corporate life from day one. We are also working closely with women’s colleges to create a level playing field for girls from tier-2, tier-3 cities who often fall behind due to a lack of guidance on career, personal finance, and other essential life skills.
We have also established strategic knowledge partnerships with campuses as part of our programs like Digital Nurture and Nurture Partner Network, offering deep-skilling opportunities as early as the fifth semester to better prepare students for career pathways.
Through hackathons, workshops, and mentorship programs, students develop practical skills and innovative solutions, while faculty members stay updated on industry requirements. Our active contribution to the Board of Studies and co-owned curriculum helps build readiness in academia.
To further support this transition, our fresher skilling program offers tailored and targeted learning interventions to enhance various soft skills. Additionally, initiatives like POD-based development, the GenCynergy Club, and the Be.Gritty Program (designed exclusively for women) help our hires build professional skills through collaboration and peer learning. These programs also instil grit, a growth mindset, and resilience in our new hires. All these engagements across the GenC lifecycle ensure a seamless transition from campus to Cognizant.
Could you share how Cognizant’s L&D, mentorship, or upskilling culture is being communicated even before Day One?
All young talent within our partner academia ecosystem has access to various pre-hiring initiatives and regional council-driven programs that help them experience Cognizant’s L&D ethos even before formally joining the organisation.
One such initiative is ‘Hello Cognizant’, through which we invite campus selects to experience our workplace and culture first-hand. These include exclusive leader connects, mentoring sessions, experience-sharing sessions, webinars, and professional development opportunities, all available even before our hires join as full-time employees.
We also work closely with academia as Panel Members, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and Curriculum Counsellors, allowing campuses to experience the Cognizant difference first-hand. These collaborations enable campuses to experience Cognizant’s values and culture up close, while also embedding industry-relevant learning pathways into the academic journey.
Beyond technical acumen, what behavioural cues, soft skills, or future-readiness indicators are becoming non-negotiable in your evaluation framework?
We are always looking for candidates who are enthusiastic about ‘engineering intuition’ with us. Beyond technical skills, we consider communication, adaptability, and learning agility as non-negotiables. These qualities ensure our workforce can collaborate seamlessly and effectively navigate challenges.
This process not only serves as a gating mechanism but also helps benchmark and further groom our hires as part of the fresher skilling program. Once the entry-level talent joins us, we provide them with multiple professional development opportunities and access to training libraries to ensure a successful career and holistic development.
What roles or capabilities do you see emerging in the next 12–18 months that were not even on the radar five years ago?
The engineering profession is undergoing a paradigm shift. The World Economic Forum is projecting that AI and automation will significantly alter 22% of existing jobs by 2030, creating 170 million new roles while displacing 92 million. For fresh graduates, this signals both a challenge and an opportunity to specialise in emerging fields that combine traditional engineering knowledge with cutting-edge technological capabilities.
Some of the capabilities we anticipate gaining prominence in the near future include:
- Low-Code/No-Code Proficiency: The ability to work in low-code/no-code environments and agility with AI co-pilot tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT for coding).
- Cross-Disciplinary Learning: Blending fields such as AI and ethics or engineering and psychology. For instance, embedded technology specialists now need to understand IoT systems, while electronics engineers increasingly require fluency in software development skills. This convergence is creating entirely new career paths.
- POD-Based Development: The ability to work in POD-based development is becoming increasingly important across all services, a trend that was virtually unheard of five years ago.
- AI and Automation Proficiency: Every engineering graduate should have at least a basic understanding of how machines can be trained to think and learn. Working with AI-powered solutions for automation, real-time analytics, and design optimisation is becoming standard across engineering fields.
- Data-Driven Engineering: Data Scientists and Data Engineers have become essential across all engineering disciplines. The integration of big data analytics into traditional engineering fields has created new hybrid roles that didn’t exist in their current form two years ago.
- Digital Privacy and Compliance Awareness: As data becomes central to engineering solutions, so too does the understanding of digital ethics, privacy frameworks, and regulatory compliance.
- Sustainability and Green Technology: Engineers specialising in renewable energy systems, particularly offshore wind farm engineering, are seeing a surge as industries transition toward sustainable practices. This field represents a significant shift as companies prioritise environmental considerations in their engineering processes.
The biggest disruption in campus hiring might not be AI; it might be expectations. How are you preparing your recruitment teams to meet this new ‘expectation economy’ among students?
We acknowledge that today’s graduates value much more than a job; they seek flexibility, meaningful work, clear career progression, and seamless digital hiring experiences. Our recruitment teams are trained to understand and cater to these preferences, ensuring that our hiring process aligns with what students value most.
We are also enhancing communication and transparency. By providing clear information about career paths, growth opportunities, and organisational values, we aim to build trust and engagement. Leveraging digital platforms allows us to offer real-time updates and insights into the hiring process, making it more accessible and informative.
Technology plays a crucial role in our approach. Integrating AI and automation into our recruitment process helps streamline operations and enhance the candidate’s experience. AI-powered resume screening, predictive analytics, and automated interview scheduling make the process more efficient and engaging.
By adopting these strategies, we aim to meet the expectations of today’s students and create a more engaging and fulfilling recruitment experience.
Atul Sahgal is a Talent Acquisition virtuoso with over 25 years of experience in driving high-impact hiring strategies. He leads a team of creative, goal-oriented recruiters, focused on meeting large-scale organisational hiring needs without compromising on quality. A firm believer in collaboration with business leaders, Atul ensures recruitment outcomes align closely with business expectations. His core strengths lie in designing scalable hiring strategies and driving continuous improvements in recruitment processes, making him a trusted advisor in navigating the evolving talent landscape.
