Slide in IT job market, freshers in peril
A sudden slump in the once-booming job market in India’s information technology (IT) sector has painted a gloomy picture for fresh engineering graduates. Thousands of them, who had received job offers during their campus interviews, are now facing the unpleasant prospect of being unemployed as companies are either annulling the offers or going slow in recruiting them. Almost all domestic IT giants have been accused of rejecting their offers or indefinitely delaying the date of joining, exactly like how they did soon after the first lockdown in the pandemic. There was chaos in the second half of 2020 when thousands of freshers had to wait indefinitely to land a job that was promised to them during campus recruitments months ahead of the pandemic.
The return of a similar situation in less than two years has indeed rattled the student community. Engineering graduates, who have a hefty educational loan on their shoulders, find the situation pretty alarming. This time, the reasons are obviously different. The ever-growing inflation in the domestic as well as foreign markets, a conscious decision by clients to spend less ahead of a potential economic slowdown, and an unexpected drop in new contracts have all forced companies to hold up the recruitment process. While some industry experts believe the winter may be a little longer, others like Salil Parekh, chief executive officer of Infosys, are quick to dismiss it as a minor concern.
According to a report by Xpheno, a leading staffing firm, September has thrown up the lowest active jobs in 17 months. It also marked the sharpest year-on-year drop. On the flip side, start-ups in the country raked in barely $2.7 billion in funding across 205 deals in the third quarter of 2022, making it the lowest in nearly two years amid the global funding slowdown. The fund crunch at several IT unicorns has undeniably decelerated job prospects for freshers.
In India, there exists no formal framework that offers guidance and counselling to freshers entering the job market. The fact is that many students were attracted to take up computer science and IT-related courses because of their better employment options and high starting salaries. This has also prompted several colleges to increase the student intake into these courses. The frequent contraction in the job market is definitely not good news for them as well as the country that counts software service exports as a major revenue earner.