HCLTech moves away from annual fresher targets; plans to hire 2,000 every quarter

HCL

Amid an uncertain business environment, India’s third-largest IT services company HCLTech has done away with the annual fresher target. Instead, it plans to add 2,000 freshers every quarter in fiscal year 2025-26, which will be better than FY25.

“We're not trying to define an annual plan in the current climate, it's not lot more prudent to make plans quarterly. Every quarter, we will continue to hire 2000 freshers,” said Ramachandran Sundararajan, Chief People Officer, HCLTech, while addressing a press conference after declaring the results.

This assumes significance as the company had scaled down its FY25 fresher hiring target to 7,000 in January, from an earlier estimate of 10,000, citing lower attrition and higher productivity.

“In the first half of the fiscal year, we onboarded about 4,000 freshers, followed by 2,134 in Q3, bringing the year-to-date total to 6,000. We expect to add another 1,000 in Q4, taking the final number to approximately 7,000 for FY25,” Sundararajan had said January 13.

The Noida-headquartered firm is the only one in the top four IT companies to have ended the fiscal year with a decline in employee count, which is down 4,061. However, it is worth noting that the services major saw a reduction of headcount by 7,398 employees in Q1 on account of a divestiture.

In April 2024, HCL Investments UK agreed to sell its entire 49 per cent stake in a joint venture (JV) with US-based State Street International Holdings, which resulted in the headcount reduction back then.

Notably, HCLTech was the only one among the top five IT firms to defy the historic headcount decline in FY24.

Addressing analysts after declaring the results, the management said FY25 revenue grew 4.7 percent while headcount reduced by 1.8 percent, on the back of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation.

Also, read: Top 5 Indian IT services companies saw a decline of 69,167 employees in FY24

Meanwhile, the company said it is completing its wage hikes, the cycle for which starts from October.

HCLTech on April 22 reported an 8 percent on-year rise in net profit at Rs 4,307 crore for Q4, up from Rs 3,986 crore in the same quarter previous fiscal. This is a seasonally weak quarter for the company due to sluggishness in the product business and margin pressures.

The company also announced a dividend of Rs 18 per share.

Ahead of the results today, HCLTech shares on BSE closed 0.26 percent higher at Rs 1,486 apiece on NSE.