IT company recruitments decline, experts say it's temporary

Rithu Dravid | NT

Bengaluru: The IT giants in Bengaluru have some disappointing news for this year’s engineering graduates as most companies are not looking to recruit fresh talent.

The IT giant Infosys has said that they won’t be hiring freshers from campuses this year. Such decisions are expected to affect the morale of engineering students who may feel that their degree is no longer a guarantee of a promising career.

However the good news is that such tech giants have only ‘temporarily’ stopped hiring fresh faces with the phase expected to last only for a brief period.

Speaking to News Trail, Mohandas Pai, Former CFO, Infosys, said that there has been huge hiring of people into companies over the past two years.

“Now due to attrition falling by 12 to 15 percent and a dip in growth rates, the companies' hiring policies are adjusting accordingly. They are going slow on recruitment. There is no point in just hiring students and getting them to sit on desks in the campus”, he said.

According to data, IT majors are estimated to hire between 50,000 to 100,000 employees during fiscal 2024. But with global recession, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation killing job recruitments, IT firms are in no hurry to recruit in big numbers.

Placement officers from prominent institutions in the city state that this could be an opportunity for graduates to explore new avenues and industries.

They could look for startups or small businesses that are still hiring and gain valuable experience.

“Infosys is not considering recruiting on a mass scale. As far as IT is concerned the students have various options to get jobs. Infosys is often not the top choice and 20 percent of students who do not get placed in other companies’ think of joining Infosys”, says Dr Raj Prakash, Former Placement Officer, UVCE.

Additionally, recruitment officers say students could consider skilling or reskilling themselves in emerging technologies to make themselves more attractive to potential employers.

Some recruitment officers at city colleges say that IT players like Infosys will continue to hire only for high profile roles in areas of cyber security, AI, software development and so on.

“Infosys, Wipro and few others over the years have recruited employees in big numbers for various roles. They have been covering recruitment for both generic and niche areas with pay packages ranging from Rs 4.2 to 12 lakhs. We at the college have 40 or more students comfortably placed with Infosys each year. The number of graduating students annually is 1200 from the college. Some students prefer only Infosys while others look out for a good pay package”, says Dr Ranganath, RVCE, Placement officer.