In Q 4 -- March 2022, India's top four IT services firms are on course to hire 2 lakh freshers in the field of engineering, with nearly 1 lakh being added. This comes at a time when companies have struggled to retain the existing workforce and have reported high attrition rates in the past few quarters. The investments in talent acquisition, upskilling and offering higher remunerations are also impacting the profits of the companies, although the projects client confidence has not dented, according to commentaries from the managements of Tier 1 IT firms.
India's largest IT service company Tata Consultancy Service TCS has surpassed its earlier target of 55,000 freshers in FY 22 and has already hired 77,000. The total number of freshers onboard a company in FY 22 to 1 lakh is expected to be more than 30,000 this quarter, which would take the total number of freshers onboard in the quarter to reach 1 lakh -- the highest in a year in a single year by an Indian company.
The company's close rival, Infosys, has outperformed its peers in revenue growth but the highest attrition is 25.5 per cent, and will hire 55,000 engineering graduates this fiscal as part of its global graduate hiring programme, which involves upskilling graduates from overseas geographies like the UK and the US, among others.
In FY 22 Wipro has set a goal of hiring 17,000 freshers and more than 22,000 people next fiscal.
In three quarters we added what took 11 quarters in the past and remain focused on building world class talent and ensuring growth isn't constrained, Thierry Delaporte, Wipro's CEO, said in the company's earnings press conference. He believes that it will take a few more quarters for the attrition to settle, although he believes it will take a few more quarters for it to slow down.
Agreed, Apparao VV, Chief Human Resources Officer, HCL Tech. We see the attrition rates flattening over the next few quarters. This quarter and next is going to be challenging as far as talent acquisition and retention is concerned, according to Apparao.
The global recruitment firm Randstad India predicts that the salaries of new recruits could rise by more than 2 x, especially at a time when companies are offering incentive packages with work from anywhere facilities.
Yeshab Giri, Chief Commercial Officer Staffing Randstad Technologies, told Business Today that fresher hiring in the Indian IT sector looks promising in the quarter-ending March 2022, as the industry gears to perform at normal operational levels. By the year 2022, many IT giants in the country have announced plans to hire between 50,000 and 65,000 employees. He said that talent will be sourced across job roles and fields of expertise in the sector due to the increase in demand for a highly skilled and cost effective workforce. He said that graduates who are looking to work from anywhere will be able to derive benefits from attractive pay packages and flexible timings because of the reverse migration.
As long as talent attraction and retention remains a challenge for IT companies, so will the salaries for job seekers who are able to bring in niche skills and expertise.
Many established IT companies are looking to broaden their geographical footprint and adopt digitised hiring to bridge the supply gap for key talent. Due to the sudden outbreak of Omicron, there are online platforms and social media networks that are used to hire in both metro and non-metro cities. Graduates in Tier 2 and 3 cities are now connecting to a wide variety of companies through online guest lectures and interview programs, opening up avenues for companies to hire talent in remote regions, Giri said.
The challenge will be to onboard and provide orientation to tens and thousands of freshers in a virtual environment when the companies have already returned to the hybrid model.
Due to the pandemic, only about 3 per cent of the company's workforce are going to office and the current atmosphere has created history by changing the traditional hiring pattern to virtual recruitment and onboarding remotely. Fresh graduate hiring is no longer a seasonal venture. Siva Prasad Nanduri, Business head IT Staffing - TeamLease Digital, said that large companies have already mentioned plans to hire more than 2 lakh freshers over the course of the year.
Nanduri is of the opinion that onboarding processes in companies have become fully digitised. Organisations are focusing more on learning and developing core competencies for the new hires because they are adapting to role-based strategies.
Digital onboarding tools have simplified the automated asset assignment process and technology tools have been set up as per job roles and location. He said that many of these programmes are linked to ensuring business continuity in the current situation.