HCL Tech on Thursday said that the company will onboard 10,000 freshers to its workforce this year, a sharp fall from the 27,000 it onboarded last financial year, and also affirmed that it would be scouting for talent in campuses this year.
The comments come on the same day when Infosys said it has no plans to give offer letters to freshers in the current year because of poor market demand.
HCL Tech said it has already onboarded 5,200 freshers in the first six months of the financial year.
“Usually the July-September quarter has the highest intake. We will close the year with about 10,000. Whatever we did in H1 will do equal in numbers in H2,” said Ramachandran Sundararajan, chief people officer, HCLTech
In the first quarter HCL Tech hired about 1,600 freshers and 3,630 were added in the last quarter.
OPTIMISTIC ABOUT HIRING
HCL further stated that the company will continue its campus hiring programmes and its visit to campuses and there is no change.
“As we speak, my colleagues are all actively visiting campuses,” Sundararajan added.
In contrast, rival Infosys said, ““At the moment we are not going to the campus, we will look at the future predictions and act accordingly.”
TCS, on the other hand, did not comment on its plans to onboard fresh employees but said that it will ‘honor’ all the offer letters and warned of a slight delay.
Like TCS and Infosys, HCLTech also saw a dip in its net headcount by 1% at 2,299 in the September quarter ended September 30 for the fiscal year 2024.
Like the others, the company said that it is currently focussing on improving utilization rates to maintain operating margin guidance amidst a tough business environment.
All IT firms in India went on a hiring spree last year, expecting strong demand for their services this year. However, demand for IT services in their core markets of the US and Europe has been lukewarm because of global financial uncertainties and high interest rates.
Sundararajan attributed the reduction in the headcount to the demand scenario and the low attrition rate in the company.
The company is also seeing improvement in its efficiency with the existing workforce hence the decline in the headcount, the company said.
Speaking on pay revisions, Sundararajan said that the company will be going with pay revisions from October onwards.
“Mid- and senior management won’t take pay hikes in FY24. 90% of the workforce will be eligible for pay hike revision,” he added.
The IT services company reported a 10 percent rise in its consolidated net profit at Rs 3,832 crore for the September quarter, in-line with estimates.