HDFC Bank sees ‘calm’ back in tech talent market

Since April 2022 the largest private lender HDFC Bank has noticed sanity returning to the tech talent market in terms of salaries and joining bonuses. After 2021 s IT industry talent war pushed up demand for technology hiring in other industries such as banking.

Six months ago, it was absolutely crazy in terms of unreasonable demands and opportunistic behaviour on the part of potential candidates who were accepting offers and then dropping out. In the past 6 -- 8 weeks, we have seen a betterment on all these dimensions, according to CHRO Vinay Razdan.

It was commonplace for IT jobeekers to negotiate an average of three to four offers and command exorbitant joining hikes of even 70 per cent as tech and digital skills were propelled into high demand, driven by Covid-led opportunities.

As of March 2022, tech majors have been witnessing 20 per cent-plus attrition, forcing them to reevaluate their hiring and retention methods in competition with almost every company hiring for their in-house tech needs. The top four IT majors in India TCS, Wipro, Infosys and HCL have hired 2.2 lakh freshers in the year 2021 -- 22 and plan to hire at least 1.6 lakh freshers in the current financial year.

Banking was on a hiring spree for tech talent in 2021 as a result of Covid-led digitisation. Razdan said that opened up a sweet spot for several industries, where customers are willing to take a digital meeting instead of a physical meeting earlier in the day, especially when they are talking financial products and solutions.

That puts a demand on the organisation for tech talent, the cloud engineering piece, people who can develop business applications, people who can manage hardware, software and the whole nine yards around that. The organisation is in the midst of increasing its branch count, particularly in the hinterlands, and focussing on the MSME segment. It is hiring for both front-end and back-end operations. The IT sector and the fintech sector are some of the main reasons why Razdan hires tech talent. What is expected out of an IT function in a banking sector is different from what is normally expected in an IT industry. He added that some areas will continue to be in high demand. Banking is very cautious about cyberattacks. Demand for cyber security has never waned and will continue to grow, people in cyber security say.