Indian Job Market: When will the Crisis be Over? Experts comment as Top IT firms plan to minimise Recruitment!

India’s top five IT service firms which includes Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCL Technologies, Wipro and Tech Mahindra, added 25% fewer employees in the last fiscal year that is fiscal year 2019-20. Automation is being seen as the major reason behind this reduction in hiring. 

Reportedly, the service firms added a net 66,500 as compared to net hiring of 87,060 in the financial year 2018-19. Put together, they employ 1.14 million people which is a quarter of India’s technology workforce. 

“This clearly represents two things. It’s no longer body-shopping. The world is changing from linear to exponential, which means new technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation and new-age technology platforms are enabling delivery models that are not linear to a number of people,” Harshvendra Soin, chief people officer of Tech Mahindra, told Economic Times.

Due to automation, few employees and existing staff have been replaced. According to Erika Lobo, executive director at Personnel Search Services and Ray & Berndtson, “many large IT services companies are seeing budget cuts by clients in the US in retail and pharma sectors and that is likely to impact future demand to some extent.”

Reportedly, Infosys has been recording a steep decline in net hiring. It is the second largest Indian IT service firm but it has almost recruited 10,000 fewer people compared to FY19.

Tech Mahindra and Infosys also come under the list of companies that has reported a significant decline in Hiring. They have reduced by almost 20%.

HCL has hired 15,000 freshers but have frozen lateral hiring for quite some time. 

However, experts anticipate need- based hiring to continue in the aforementioned tech services companies.