“We’re expecting fresher hiring to grow by 20-25% this year compared to FY24. Last year, hiring slowed due to global economic uncertainties, but 2024-25 is showing signs of recovery,” said Krishna Vij, vice president at TeamLease Digital.
Last year, despite robust recruitment projections, only around 80,000 freshers were hired, with many companies not honouring previous offers due to market uncertainties, said Vij.
Companies are currently placing a greater emphasis on fresh talent to drive digital transformation initiatives, fill skill gaps, and reduce reliance on experienced lateral hires, according to experts.
“At Wipro, the first priority is to onboard Next Gen Associates (NGAs), who had previously been made offers. In Q1FY25, we onboarded approximately 3,000 such NGAs,” a company spokesperson said in an emailed response. “In FY25, we foresee an overall intake of 10,000 – 12,000 NGAs and, in addition, will hire in the areas of Gen AI, cybersecurity and cloud.”
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Wipro will also continue to explore off-campus hiring strategies and partnerships with academic institutions. The company did not undertake any campus hiring last fiscal while Tech Mahindra’s hiring was in a few hundreds.“We are looking at hiring about 5,000 people from engineering campuses this year. This will be in instalments and will be onboarded in multiple lots,” said Richard Lobo, chief people officer, Tech Mahindra. “Through our campus hiring, we are looking at pivoting more on new age skills like AI, ML, data analytics, etc,” he said.
In addition, Tech Mahindra is looking at hiring 1,000 interns under the Prime Minister Internship scheme, said Lobo.
TCS has already announced plans to hire up to 40,000 freshers, while Infosys is targeting around 20,000 campus recruits. Both these companies did not respond to queries citing mandatory silent periods ahead of quarterly results.
Experts said however that the hiring tally in 2024 is likely to be lower than the peak hirings during 2021-2022 when demand for IT professionals surged due to pandemic-induced digital transformation.
“Over the last few quarters, the large IT services companies have leveraged automation and AI technologies to optimise their workforce. As a result, they have reduced their intake of freshers and bench strength in a significant way,” said Aditya Mishra, chief executive, CIEL HR Services.
“Going forward, we anticipate green shoots …and a rise of 10-15% in their fresher hiring in the current and following quarter with a focus on recruiting people with the new-age skills,” said Mishra.
During its earnings call this June, Milind Lakkad, chief HR officer at TCS said, “We have onboarded 11,000 trainees in this quarter, and we also have concluded the National Qualifier Test and this will further add to that number.”
The number of aggregate employees at TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech and Tech Mahindra fell by 2,034 sequentially in the June quarter. Of the total, TCS, Wipro and Tech Mahindra registered net additions in headcount during the period.
Large IT services firms mostly hire in bulk from tier-III and tier-IV engineering colleges.
