Fresher hiring has dropped significantly across major Indian IT and IT/eS companies like TCS, Infosys, and HCL Tech in the third quarter of FY23. This, amid a delay in onboarding, is indicative of a slowdown in hiring across the IT sector as the industry combats headwinds because of the ongoing economic downturn in the West.
TCS
TCS, the largest IT services company in India, hired around 7,000 new freshers in the third quarter of FY 23, over 2,500 less than Q2 FY 23, when the fresher hiring stood at 9,840.
During the earnings call, Milind Lakkad, the Chief Human Resource Officer of TCS said, “In Q3 alone we brought on about another 7,000 plus engineers in Q3, and bringing in a total quarter of 42,000 freshers year-to-date.”
Lakkad noted that the company plans on utilising the existing freshers instead of adding more in the upcoming quarters. He said, “Last year, our net hiring was significantly ahead of our revenue growth. Our focus this year has been on utilising all that excess capacity and looking our newest employee is productive.”
Thousands of freshers are also waiting for up to ten months to be onboarded at TCS after getting an offer letter. The company says that these new recruits would be onboarded in a staggered manner in the coming time.
A TCS spokesperson told Business Today, “As always, TCS will honour all offers made as part of our campus hiring.”
Infosys
Infosys, the second largest IT company, has also reduced fresher hiring in the third quarter of FY 23. The company onboarded roughly 6,000 employees, over 4,000 less than the 10,032 it had onboarded in Q2 FY 23.
Nilanjan Roy, the Chief Financial Officer of the company, noted that the IT company has a significant number of employees on its bench and might reconsider hiring targets.
“In fact, that will give us some headroom for growth looking ahead... We have a very substantial bench and I think our utilisation at about 81.7 is one of the lowest we've had. So, we have some headroom there,” the CFO said during the third quarter earnings call.
Fresher IT professionals are also awaiting onboarding at Infosys for the past several months after receiving offer letters, as previously reported by Business Today.
HCL Tech
Fresher hiring at HCL Tech also reduced substantially in Q3 FY 23. 8,359 freshers were onboarded at HCL Tech in Q2 FY 23, whereas 5,892 freshers were onboarded in Q3 FY 23.
Chief People Officer of HCL Tech, Ramachandran Sundarajan, said during the earnings call that one of the reasons why hiring reduced in Q3 FY23 was because of higher rate of retention in the existing workforce of the company.