The country's largest electricity generating company, NTPC Ltd, is on a recruitment spree. The company is planning to hire 1,800 to 2,000 people in 2007-08. It is also calling back former employees who may want to rejoin the Navratna.

The company has ambitious capacity expansion plans for which it needs people across all departments. "What was done in 30 years we are planning to replicate in the next five or six years and to achieve this we need the workforce," says GK Agarwal, executive director, HR and Power Management Institute of NTPC.

NTPC is targeting an increase in power generation capacity to 50,000 mw by 2012 and 75,000 mw by 2017, from just over 26,000 mw at present. For 2008, it is expecting to add 3,160 mw of generating capacity.

Talking about absorbing ex-employees into the company's fold, Agarwal says that since these are experienced people, they will not require training. However, the company is not looking at hiring retired personnel, he adds.

Incidentally, the attrition rate at NTPC is less than 1 per cent. In order to tap all available resources, the management has chalked out a strategy whereby, along with ex-employees, campus recruitment is also being done.

Already the company has shortlisted about 150 people from IITs and NITs through campus recruitment from various disciplines, such as mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, electrical engineering and civil engineering.

Also, 10 days ago the company conducted an All India entrance test for fresh engineering graduates. As many as 40,000 people appeared for the test though the available seats are only 450.

What attracts the young graduates to a company like NTPC is its great work culture and emoluments, which are the best in the public sector, says Agarwal.

A fresh graduate gets Rs 4-5 lakh (Rs 400,000-500,000) per annum along with performance-based bonuses and incentives. The pay-scales are due for revision from January 1, 2007. NTPC is among the top five companies in both private and public sector in terms of market capitalisation.

Financially also the company has been doing extremely well. It has posted a 15.57 per cent jump in net profit for 2006-07 to Rs 6,726.4 crore (Rs 67.264 billion) as against Rs 5,820.2 crore (Rs 58.202 billion) in 2005-06. Net sales were up 17.20 per cent during the financial year to Rs 30,638.7 crore (Rs 306.387 billion) compared to Rs 26,142.9 crore (Rs 261.429 billion) in 2005-06.

There are induction programmes for the new recruits, which include six months of classroom training and six months of training in the plants. Also, adds Agarwal, the company has special training programmes for people coming from rural areas to acquaint them with the corporate work culture.

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