Former Accenture VP Soma Pandey joins Cognizant as Talent Management head

Attrition-hit IT services major, Cognizant has appointed Soma Pandey, a veteran Human Resources (HR) executive as the Head of Talent Management. In this role, Soma will drive and shape the enterprise talent strategy including addressing key people practices, talent and performance management, learning and leadership development, culture and employee experience. Cognizant's former Head Talent Acquisition, Suresh Bethavandu had resigned from the firm after a 25 years tenure and has joined Mindtree as Chief Peoples Officer.

As per an official statement, Soma brings over 25 years of progressive HR leadership, with experience spanning diverse sectors and roles in organisations such as Accenture, Randstad, Mastek, and ITC Ltd. She joins Cognizant from Firstsource Solutions where she was the CHRO for close to five years, the Nasdaq listed firm stated.

The New-Jersey headquartered firm reported the highest ever attrition at 33 percent for the September quarter in the IT services factor with talent retention a major concern for the technology major. Out of more than 3.1 lakh employees, nearly 2 lakh workforce of Cognizant is based in India.