Cognizant has announced plans to hire around 24,000–25,000 fresh graduates in 2026 as part of its effort to expand the “bottom of the pyramid” workforce. The proposed hiring represents an increase of nearly 20 per cent compared with 2025, when the company onboarded close to 20,000 graduates.
Speaking during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call, CEO Ravi Kumar S said Cognizant is pursuing a broader pyramid strategy by pushing high-value technology expertise down to entry-level employees through the use of Artificial Intelligence. He noted that the company is increasingly decoupling revenue growth from headcount growth, pointing to the non-linearity between revenue and margins. In 2025, Cognizant’s revenue grew 6.4 per cent in constant currency terms, while its workforce expanded by 4 per cent, resulting in a 2.6 per cent increase in revenue per employee.
The company said that of the 20,000 graduates hired in 2025, about 16,000 are already deployed on client projects, while the remaining 4,000 are currently undergoing training. CFO Jatin Dalal said Cognizant plans to scale graduate hiring by around 20 per cent in 2026, targeting an intake of approximately 24,000–25,000 candidates.
Cognizant has also reworked its recruitment framework, shifting from a linear hiring approach to a graded model. This includes a premium hiring track called ‘Tech Wizards’, aimed at attracting talent from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), alongside its broader early-career hiring programme.
