[inapis]

Huh. I always thought body shop would refer to companies who hire at scale. Indians call them MRCs - Mass Recruitment companies.

IBM/TCS/Infosys/Wipro/Cognizant are consultancy shops which are some examples of MRCs. They generally hire at scale - like 10,000 people in one go or scooping up a whole college’s batch. Thats how they have also been able to keep a freshers salary static at 3-5 LPA (~4k-6.5k USD) for 13 years now.

[gumby]

Local jargon. In the states a body shop* is a company where they are sending people to do work and charging a commission on hours worked. They could do some project consulting too (clearly some people cost more than others and some payments are structured around milestones or even efficacy) but essentially at the end of the day revenue is roughly proportionate to headcount.

Some firms using this model are, due to pretentious courtesy, not described this way (e.g. law firms, landscaping firms, and other such service industries).

By contrast large employers like Walmart or GM aren't considered body shops as their revenue is not proportionate to headcount, and in fact improving productivity helps their model.

* it's a joke name as "body shop"s original (and continued) meaning is a company that repairs dents in a car's "body" (the non-engine parts).