TATA Consultancy Services, in partnership with AIESEC, is dedicated to supporting the development of the youth-led organization. The first partnership between AIESEC and TCS happened in 1999 when TCS became the vendor for the brand new online system which AIESEC wanted to develop to manage its worldwide operations. By 2004, the partnership evolved further and the ACE program became the main essence of the partnership between the two organizations. The program’s objective is to bring to our offices in India and Hungary young internationals with the eagerness to learn and to add diversity to our working environment, at the same giving an opportunity to the youth to build a highly qualified professional career. ACE stands for Accelerate, Connect, and Experience, and that’s what we provide for each one of our interns on a daily basis.

One of the main reasons that motivated the creation of the ACE Program was to bring diversity to TCS, in both corporate and cultural ways. The company aimed to raise internal awareness of how different people can be and how this actually can add value to our daily work, providing fresh perspectives and opinions, bringing different points of view, and adding new dynamics to the teams. TCS doesn’t only envision the ACE program as a one-year internship for international talent but also focuses on the professional career development for all of the ACE interns. Our main aim is to ensure the growth of our interns within our organization while bringing diversity and diversity inspired innovation to our workplace. At the same time, our main focus is to help interns in their professional career development. Thus, we also focus on the absorption of ACE Alumni in different TCS offices around the world. This helps us to ensure the knowledge transfer inside our organization while focusing on our interns’ career development. Still, it is important to say that as a multinational company located in 46 countries around the world, having such diverse associates guarantees a perspective of absorption out of India, so they can continue their career with us.

Since the ACE program between TCS and AIESEC was established in 2005, more than 1000 global youth talents participated in the ACE program in the Hungary and India TCS offices. During the 12 years of the program, many ACE interns continued their professional life in different TCS branches across the world. As a result, many ACE alumni have been promoted to different leadership positions in TCS. By recruiting and retaining global talent, we aim to grow our international footprint and become a global company that is an employer of choice. As millennials are increasingly becoming the major demographic in the workplace, TCS ensures to adapt its talent strategy by creating a dynamic workplace where millennials can feel connected with the vision of the company and be inspired for personal and professional development.

Despite the clear benefits, hiring international youth talent from overseas can present also some challenges. Not least among this is the complicated process of navigating employment laws and visa requirements for international interns. Requirements and regulations are different in each country and between countries and can change frequently. Beyond visas, initial accommodation, cultural adaptation, induction, and integration should be taken into account. We learned that as a company we should be ready for these challenges and shape our international internship program around them. Our benefits and onboarding process have been adapted over the years and as a result, we have achieved very high satisfaction of the interns. In a recent satisfaction survey for ACE interns, more than 90% of our interns indicated that they would recommend the ACE program to their friends and colleagues.

Our current aim to expand all this impact and continue to grow the program in India, as we are still expanding to the many cities where TCS has branches, but also to keep our eyes on our TCS localities worldwide that could definitely host the ACE program in a successful way, as Hungary has been doing for almost ten years. We are still the biggest exchange partner of AIESEC and aim to continue being, because for us, the value proposition and results of the program are very significant to our company.

Download the Youth Global Employabillity Report