As IT slumps, Infosys and Wipro say goodbye to mass hiring

BENGALURU: As India's $160-billion IT industry faces one of the leanest years of growth in its history, the lower demand for IT services is driving down hiring numbers, which in turn is forcing companies like Infosys and Wipro to become extra selective in hiring even freshers -- a departure from the traditional "mass hiring" strategy that IT firms have followed for the last two decades.

In an interview, Infosys veteran Binod Hampapur Rangadore, who previously headed the company's talent and technology operations, said that the company is in the process of tightening hiring processes at campuses that it will visit, even as it plans to hire roughly 20,000 freshers this year.



"We are trying to see how we can improve the quality of hiring -- that is something we're working on. In the yesteryears, more number of people were being taken from various colleges, the good people would get distributed across.This year, that kind of recruitments in colleges may go down with fewer companies going to the campuses -- the economy is a little tight, so job markets will be tougher," said Rangadore, who now heads the company's quality unit and government relations.

"One is to tighten our process of recruitment to see who are the best and brightest that we should recruit -that is a continuous process. We tighten each time -- tougher questions during interviews, performance of past students from colleges we go to. We shortlist those colleges," he said.This trend also spells doom for engineering graduates at another level -- they are unlikely to see a jump in starting salaries anytime in the near future.



Rangadore said that with growth rates across the industry shrinking, companies like Infosys cannot afford to dole out higher entry-level salaries and risk sacrificing precious margins.

"It's an affordability issue. Of course we would like to give more money to freshers and like to retain those people. But today the volumes are there -- so any small change you make, it will cost you because the volumes are high," said Rangadore.

STICKY WICKET
Freshers joining the IT industry, thus, find themselves on sticky wicket. Entry-level salaries have not seen an increase in nearly a decade now, with most companies still offering packages of around Rs 3.25 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh. Despite marginal salary hikes offered by US-based Cognizant -- followed by TCS -- last year, experts point out that the range of salaries still largely remains the same. While Cognizant raised fresher salaries from Rs 3.05 lakh to Rs 3.35 lakh last year, TCS hiked fresher wages from Rs 3.18 lakh to Rs 3.30 lakh -- well within the Rs 3-3.5 lakh range that has been prevalent for the last decade since at least 2007-08.

India's showpiece IT industry is currently facing one of its slowest years of growth on record, with many analysts and brokerages predicting that demand for IT services will growth in high single digits in the best case scenario.

This in turn has created a ripple effect and created a situation where students across the country are now increasingly questioning the viability of pursuing careers in engineering.

MORE WOMEN IN INFY
However, one of the few bright spots in the current situation is that the number of women working in the IT sector has seen an exponential jump since the early heydays of the industry when women engineers were a rare commodity.

Rangadore said that the percentage of women working at Infosys has now jumped more than three times in the last two decades.

"There are 34% women now (in our workforce) -- five years ago, it was about 30%. Number of women coming in as engineers is high now. In 1992 it was less than 10%... and now it is 34%," Rangadore said.

India's IT industry currently employs well over 3 million people, a third of which are estimated to be women, according to industry lobby Nasscom.