BENGALURU: Top IT companies have slowed down freshers hiring and according to experts, the second half of this fiscal (H2FY24)could witness an all-time low hiring considering the present macro uncertainties. Clients are also cutting back on spends and companies have decided to honour all offers that they already made and increase utilisation of the present bench strength.
Many IT companies have not set any campus hiring target. Infosys said it still has a significant fresher bench with the company. “At the moment, we are not going to the campuses as yet,” said Nilanjan Roy, CFO, Infosys, during the company’s Q2 earnings conference. The company had hired about 50,000 freshers last year.
Wipro said that it would honour all offers that it has already made. Staffing firm Xpheno said its outlook for FY2024 headcount is a net annual growth of 2.4% over FY2023 closing. Net headcount additions for this fiscal might close at sub 200,000 range (1,60,000-1,90,000). It added that the IT sector headcount will be below the 6.8 million mark, as against 6.6 million closure in March 2023.
Top four IT firms in India have cumulatively cut their workforce by about 38,950 employees in the first half of this fiscal. In FY23, top 5 IT firms’ employee addition fell 69% as they cumulatively added 83,906 employees as against 2,73,377 employees onboarded in FY22.
The IT sector has undergone a significant transformation this year marked by a noticeable decline of approximately 25-30% in demand for entry-level positions, said Aditya Narayan Mishra, MD & CEO of CIEL HR Services.
“This decline in hiring fresh talent can be attributed to several factors, one of which is the evolving landscape within the IT industry itself. The rapid progress in automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning has led to optimisation in the workforce and hence, a decline in demand,” he added. Firms are increasingly in search of professionals who possess specialised expertise in emerging technologies, rather than engaging in widespread hiring of freshers.