TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan shares his advice for leaders, job seekers and career starters

One year after Rajesh Gopinathan was elevated to the position of the CEO from that of a CFO at Tata Consultancy Services, he spoke in an interview about work-life balance.

“I am understanding the cadence of the year. In the second year, I will be much more planned, because I now know what to anticipate,” he had said.

He laughs when I remind him of this in a freewheeling chat this week. Two years and Covid-19 later, things have drastically changed. “The best laid plans of mice and men…It’s a huge learning and also a huge eye-opener because many times we underestimate the power of the human capacity for change.”

And what changes are we seeing? For one, the operative word has shifted: From ‘challenge’ to ‘adaptability’ and ‘resilience’, he says.

In the interview, Gopinathan shares his insights on the road to recovery post Covid-19, job creation in IT industry and the mantras CEOs and job seekers should abide by in periods of crisis. Watch the video here and read the excerpts below:

Q] What would your advice be to management leaders in periods of crisis and to job seekers and young professionals?

A] To people in similar roles: We need to let go and be prepared to be in a state of perpetual beta. We don't need to be 100% sure about what is going to come. We need to bet on our people to be able to handle the uncertainty.

As far as job seekers and my younger colleagues are concerned, you couldn't be in a better position than now because change is always the friend of the one who is starting new. Don't assume that because you know something today, which is hot right now, that sets you up for future. If you want to think about a 30-40 year career, you need to be constantly ready to learn. And you are digital native. So your ability to learn is faster. Nurture that spirit as you capitalise on the differentiated skill that you currently have.

Q] What is your perception of employment generation in Indian IT in future?

A] In absolute terms, Indian IT’s employment potential will continue to be quite strong. The relative ratio of IT to other industries is a factor of what happens on the larger economic scenario. But I don't see major changes to it unless some other sectors significantly step up. In the foreseeable future, IT services will remain very attractive and a significant part of the job environment, because the demand for talent and the demand for services is only going to explode, given the role technology is playing today and in future.

Q] Is the young workforce among the most vulnerable with increasing use of tech and automation post Covid? How will hiring for TCS change?

A] The straight answer to the first one is No. If at all there is one population that should be most confident, it is the youngest of the ones that are coming in because they are native to many of the technologies leading the disruption. Automation needs to be embraced as a tool rather than feared as a disruptor. When you see the history of our industry over the last decade or two, many things that used to be done manually in in the early 2000s were significantly automated away and simplified as new products and new platforms came about that did not reduce the total demand for technology services.

My bigger message is to the ones with 10-15 years of experience. They also need to embrace it rather than being worried about it. And they need to invest in their contextual knowledge and upgrade their skills in terms of the tool usage.

Q] Which skills will be the top job drivers going ahead?

A] I would say collaborative ability to learn from others and to apply that to your own context and to be that glue that holds it together - that is the key skill that we need to invest in. No business professional will be able to ignore technology in the future. And the corollary to that is that no technology professional will be able to ignore the business context in future. So this ability to be aware of what technology is doing and how we are adding value, that is the critical skill. There also needs to be articulation of that so that we can communicate effectively inside large teams.

It's very interesting that at the time of maximum technology disruption, skills that matter more are not the hard skills of the tool but the softer skills of human interaction, being able to understand, empathise and quickly realign to be effective.

Q] What do you think the IT industry’s strategy should be in terms of catering to some of the growth markets like Latin America or Asia or Europe? Is a good time for companies to be focusing on the Europe market, as that is one region showing positive prospects?

 A] In the last three years, Europe has been growing at more than 15% and high teens. We expect that Europe will continue to outperform from a growth perspective, both from a catch-up on the technology shift that is required, as well as in their embrace of so many of these new technologies. Many of our investments there are paying rich dividends. The US continues to lead from the innovation side. UK is more challenged, suffering as it is from the twin impact of Brexit and Covid.

The developing markets are much more difficult to call. Like in India, we are in a fair amount of uncertainty as to what will be the trajectory of the economic recovery when it comes about. We are fully engaged with this ecosystem, whether it is in India, Latin America or other markets, but the complexities are much higher. One reason being we have still not gotten infection growth rate under full control.

Q] BFSI and retail - two of your biggest verticals - have been impacted badly. What would your vertical strategy be going forward? How do you see exposure to healthcare increasing?

A] The impact on BFSI is more anticipatory. There’s been a lot of provisions being taken in anticipation of the pain that is yet to come. And that has resulted in a fairly conservative stance in the early part of the pandemic, where you saw all the large banks taking on significant amount of provisions and building up their capital base to be able to take the shocks of the actual impact that they anticipate, which will come in the future.

Retail industry is going through a real economic shock. We’re working with them to accelerate the ecommerce shift even more than what was going on in the previous year. Focus on areas like healthcare and other smaller ones, continues at pace, as these are sectors that have been growing at double digits for us, in fact, mid to high teens. Their relative importance in the overall mix of TCS will keep on increasing as our vertical structures rebalance away from a predominant BFSI focus. BFSI used to be 50% of our business. Today. it is slightly less than 30, and this trend continue.

Q] Will remote working encourage more women to join the workforce?

A] We are very proud of the fact that we probably have the largest base of women in the technology industry and that too working in actual technology projects. The pandemic has allowed us to use technologies that already existed more effectively by reducing the threshold of acceptability. That is a good thing because many of the dependencies that we have seen in why this participation level drops off, is the inability to commit yourself to be in a different location for a very extended period of time. A lot of the work content could be done through remote collaboration like we're currently doing. And the acceptability of that increasing both inside enterprises and between enterprises will be a huge booster.

Q] One advice you would give to someone who's looking to get hired, but is not from an elite university or college?

A] I would say to those who are in institutes that don't have the repute today, you are in a position that's much better than ever before. Equally a caveat for those who are in other institutes: do not assume that the Institute bestows on you a special status, you will need to make sure that you're using the facilities of the Institute to truly differentiate yourself against a larger population.

Democratisation of knowledge is going to be the defining factor going forward. Educational institutions will need to start thinking that because it is not the degree that they give and the stamp that they give, it will be - are they truly adding skills that are unique? And we ourselves have adopted what we call TNQT - TCS National Qualifier Test, three years back, where we completely democratised our hiring process and gave an open platform for people who wanted to join TCS to participate in, irrespective of which Institute they came from.

How will job creation in the IT industry change with increasing digitisation? What should job seekers focus on to adapt to these changing times? Share your views in the comments below.