Cognizant has told Indian media and campus placement cells that it plans to hire around 25,000 freshers from Indian colleges in 2026, an increase from the close to 20,000 graduates it brought on in 2025. For students and early-career job seekers tracking the campus hiring season, the number is worth noting both for its scale and for what the company has said about why it's growing.

What's being hired for

Reports on the drive describe it as part of a push to expand what Cognizant calls the "bottom of the pyramid" — the large base of entry-level engineers who get trained up on the company's delivery methodology after joining, rather than being hired for one narrow skill. Several accounts of the plan frame it explicitly as an AI-era hiring push, meaning new hires can expect training that includes AI-assisted development tools and workflows alongside the traditional onboarding curriculum, rather than training that ignores how the work itself is changing.

How it compares to peers

The move stands out against a mixed picture elsewhere in Indian IT this year. TCS and HCLTech have both signaled renewed hiring after a slower stretch, while other large firms have reported flat or shrinking headcount as attrition outpaces new additions. Infosys has said it expects to hire around 20,000 freshers in FY27 and has reported no layoffs over the past year. Against that backdrop, Cognizant's 25,000 figure is one of the larger single-company commitments to fresher hiring announced so far this year.

What this means if you're applying

• Timing: Off-campus applications typically route through Cognizant's own careers portal, while on-campus drives run through individual college placement offices — both channels are reportedly active for this cycle.
• Expect AI literacy to matter earlier: given the stated AI-first framing, familiarity with AI-assisted coding tools, even at a basic level, is likely to be a differentiator in interviews, not just a nice-to-have mentioned in passing.
• Verify details directly: compensation bands, exact role titles (GenC, GenC Next, Elevate, and similar tracks), and selection rounds vary by cycle and campus, so treat any number you see outside Cognizant's own communications as indicative rather than final.

The bigger picture

Large-scale fresher hiring announcements like this one are a reasonable, if imperfect, signal of sector confidence — companies don't commit to onboarding tens of thousands of entry-level employees if they expect flat or declining demand for services. That said, announced targets and actual year-end hiring numbers don't always match exactly, so it's worth watching how this figure holds up as the year closes, the same way it's worth comparing any single company's hiring plans against the sector-wide employment data that comes out quarterly.

Read more on the hiring plan.