Most IT service companies maintain fresher hiring numbers in top colleges

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IT service companies generally maintained their pace of hiring freshers even amid concerns over dwindling net employee addition numbers, according to people aware of placements in seven top educational institutions.

Additionally, global captive centres (GCCs), which are offshore units that perform designated functions for large corporations, have also started to come in to hire freshers.

Among IT service companies, Wipro was an exception, having previously confirmed to Moneycontrol that the company did not visit colleges for the first round of placements. Of the seven colleges, one said that Infosys did not visit the campus, but this did not dent its placement numbers.

A university in Andhra Pradesh said Accenture, Tata Consultancy Services, Cognizant, and Capgemini have completed their hiring process.

“The [placement] numbers are a little low but still good,” the person said, adding that there are many opportunities for those looking for jobs in the IT service market. For IT service companies that came to hire, the timelines are similar to last year and there aren’t any delays.

Salary packages

According to a recruiter, companies prefer to wrap up their campus hiring in the first round of placements in August and September (the seventh semester of the graduating batch) to get the best students. In addition, companies have come in with three salary package tiers – Rs 3-4.5 lakh, Rs 6 lakh, and Rs 9-10 lakh, depending on the skills of the students.

Three colleges in Tamil Nadu said hiring was at par with the previous year’s levels and some companies even exceeded last year’s recruitment numbers.

A coordinator from a Tamil Nadu institute said that while hiring has been delayed for Infosys, the process is on for them to visit the campus.

Placement coordinators at three institutes said companies may be picking certain colleges for campus hiring this time instead of casting a wider net, as was the case in the previous year.

The importance of IT service placements for colleges cannot be understated. One placement director said if 8,000-10,000 offers are made today, half of them come from IT service companies.

A placement director from a Tamil Nadu institute said Cognizant is hiring in two phases. In the first phase, it offered jobs to about 800 people and the rest are expected in the next phase, before the students graduate. In the same institute, TCS made 1,000 more offers than it did the previous year.

The director said GCCs are hiring larger numbers as well. Apart from this, companies have opened up avenues to hire freshers, including through national tests and other off-campus hiring.

TeamLease Digital CEO Sunil Chemmankotil told Moneycontrol that where these companies hired 3.75 lakh to 4 lakh freshers as opposed to the usual target of 3.25 lakh freshers, this year it is expected at 2.7-3 lakh.

“There is definitely more scrutiny happening this time on fresher hiring, which is a reflection of the market condition. I feel that there will be some reduction in overall fresher hiring, which is not the right thing… If you give a gap in a particular year in large numbers, then when the market picks up, they will end up having a gap in their talent requirements,” he said.

He added that as a strategy, companies have processes that they would not want to mess up. If companies do not hire now due to uncertainty, their only option would be to hire off-campus.

Data from TeamLease’s job site Freshersworld showed that 1.6 lakh jobs were posted on the platform in the year to date compared with 2.2 lakh jobs in the previous period. Of these, 90 percent were from IT service companies. According to Chemmankotil, 15-20 percent of fresher hiring is done off-campus.

“For 2024, the hiring numbers are projected to be less in comparison to 2023 hiring. Mass hiring is happening for edtech companies, engineering services companies and the banking sector only,” he said.

GCC hiring

However, on the GCC hiring front, he said freshers in India are not readily employable and require nine months to be productive.

Vikram Ahuja, managing director of ANSR, said he expects a 40 percent increase in hiring by GCCs. ANSR is a consulting company that helps build and establish GCCs in India.

Ahuja said GCCs are foraying into campus hiring earlier in their timeline.

“Typically, GCCs would get in freshers at the 3-5 year mark. Today, GCCs that are in year one or two are already starting to look at freshers. However, it's not standard campus hiring – demand today is a lot on upskilling,” he said, adding that there is interest in niche skills.

GCCs that earlier built a strong workforce from laterals are now starting to look at freshers as a way to address some of the unpredictability in the market by bringing in people and training them on the job, he said.

About 1-1.2 lakh jobs are being created, of which 20-30 percent are for those with less than two years of experience, including freshers, Ahuja said.

“There is definitely a big move towards upskilling young graduates and getting them prepped for the GCC environment with very specialised skill sets, through running boot camps, training programmes and so on,” he said.

He was upbeat that despite expectations of a slowdown, the growth numbers will be there.