Cognizant to increase entry-level hiring, expanding beyond tech to non-STEM majors

Cognizant is increasing entry-level hiring as artificial intelligence reshapes the workforce, CEO Ravi Kumar S told Fortune. The company is bringing in more school graduates this year, expanding recruitment beyond traditional tech majors to liberal arts and community colleges.

Kumar believes AI will expand corporate employment rather than reduce it. “AI is an amplifier of human potential. It’s not a displacement strategy,” he said.

The firm is actively seeking non-STEM graduates, including anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and journalists. He questioned how expertise and specialised knowledge could still be considered “premium” when information is so easily accessible.


He added: “If it’s faster to expertise, then expertise is not the asymmetry. Intelligence is not the asymmetry. Applying intelligence is the asymmetry.”

Kumar advised students to focus on interdisciplinary skills. He gave examples, such as historians combining computational skills to become “futurists,” or biology majors using AI to accelerate drug development cycles.

However, he also cautioned that digital skills created a divide. He said that it didn’t build a bridge between people, as those who had the skills moved further ahead of those who didn’t. “It covered people who produced the tool. It did not create prosperity for the people who used it,” he said. “The producers made a ton of money, and the users had convenience and information at their fingertips.”

He emphasised the continued importance of human skills: “You need human skills plenty at the end. The start is all about prompting, conceptualizing, finding the purposeful problem, and everything else. The middle is all there with AI, and the end of it is validation and verification by humans.”

In addition to hiring more graduates, Kumar told Fortune that Cognizant has apprenticeship programmes in 30 states and has partnered with Merit America to support mid-career professionals.