“They have technical expertise but don’t understand how business works,” Publicis Sapient global CPO on hiring fewer freshers

Publicis Sapient is hiring fewer fresh graduates as artificial intelligence (AI) raises demand for engineers who can assess AI-generated work using their understanding of the client's business, global chief people officer Kameshwari Rao told the Economic Times Digital.

“I think what has changed is we have fewer fresh graduates,” said Rao. “They have a high level of technical expertise but it takes longer to teach them everything about the domain and the solution. They don’t understand how business works. They don't understand processes or workflows.”

She expects this gap to remain for another year or two, until universities change their curricula and freshers graduate with a better understanding of business operations.


Publicis Sapient, the digital business transformation arm of Publicis Groupe, adopted a “people plus product strategy” about 18 months ago. Rao said it built three AI products, Bodhi, Slingshot and Sustain, drawing on three decades of industry and client knowledge and expects employees to use these tools fluently. The company now describes itself as a “product-led services company”, with employees expected to combine those products with their own expertise when delivering client solutions.

Rao said an AI agent can now write most of the code for a project such as a retailer’s self-checkout kiosk, leaving engineers to decide whether the output meets the client’s needs.

“Is that the most efficient solution? Is it the best solution from a retailer perspective? Do I know how other retailers operate? All of this, a technology person is supposed to know. That’s the value add,” she said.

The shift has raised expectations for engineers starting their careers, she said, as they must apply judgment to AI’s output instead of simply writing code.

“The bar for an engineer has gone up. He’s no longer an engineer only. He's an engineering consultant,” Rao said, clarifying that the company does not formally use that term. “Coding is very ABCD type... It’s a black and white thing. So, how do you introduce the grey in their lives?”

She does not, however, expect fresher hiring to remain low indefinitely. An internal programme called PS-Expo, where employees demonstrated AI work for clients, attracted about 130 entries against an expected 30. Many came from junior employees whose ideas clients later piloted, she said.

“In the short-term, I think you will see fewer junior people. In the longer term, I think it will be the junior people who will raise the bar on themselves,” Rao said.

Changing structures and billing

IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) companies have traditionally operated with a broad base of young engineers and fewer senior employees. Rao expects AI adoption and reduced fresher hiring to reshape that pyramid over time.

“I think overall it will start looking parallel. It’ll take five to seven years, but it will be parallel in my view,” she said.

Different layers will remain because each contributes something distinct, she said, from creativity among junior employees to judgment at middle levels and direction from leadership.

Rao said Publicis Sapient has always combined work billed by hours with work linked to outcomes such as higher client revenue or improved returns on advertising spend. She expects the outcome-based share to grow.

“The client is expecting you to do more work with less people because of AI. So, there is a pressure on the billing rates as well as the number of people both,” she said.

This will also require the company to assess teams, since they deliver outcomes collectively. “We haven't done this yet... We are in the process of actually figuring out what might be the best way to do it,” Rao said.

Clients increasingly ask for AI engineers, but Rao said that often means “the same Java person who now has a high fluency” in AI tools. Publicis Sapient continues to call them engineers and has not added AI to job titles or designations.

“We have an AI product. We've not prefixed anything with AI... The work is the work,” she said.

New roles have emerged in HR, where Rao’s team now includes a product manager and someone working on AI insights. The latter builds dashboards that let employees ask questions instead of reading static reports, she said.

She also expects HR to move from separate functions such as learning and shared services towards workflows, with one person owning an employee’s experience from onboarding to exit.

Value over volume

Rao said the company would continue assessing employees on the value they create for clients, adding that neither AI use nor the volume of work would, by itself, determine their performance.

“Let’s say, one person created three presentations today, whereas another person did one presentation in three days. So, that cannot be the way in which you evaluate people,” she said. “I do not have to do things like formatting a presentation. But what I write on the slide is still mine.”

Asked whether stronger AI skills attract higher pay, Rao said the company makes no such distinction because “all our engineers are AI engineers”. Compensation continues to depend on the role and the value an employee creates, she said, comparing this with the different benchmarks previously used for platform engineers and quality engineers.

Clients already expect a share of productivity gains from tools such as Slingshot, but the company has yet to decide how employees might benefit or how much it would retain through higher margins, Rao said.

“None of it is in play right now. It is something we have to see as we go along,” she said.

For mid-level engineers, the work has shifted from using AI to write code faster to checking whether that code serves its purpose, Rao said. They must think faster, connect information from several sources and keep learning.

“If they can't pace up, which, you know, happens with every technology evolution, something else will be there for them. But this field may not be the place that they’ll be able to make a mark in their career,” she said.

Rao said AI had not changed the company’s performance policy, under which employees receive opportunities to improve before they face separation.

“If a person is unable to create value in the work that they are doing, there is a period of time where we give them opportunities. If that does not work, the person separates from the company,” she said, adding that the company handles the process respectfully and sensitively.