After 2 lacklustre years, IT companies like TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech to hire in thousands from campuses

MUMBAI|BANGALORE: After a few tepid years at college campuses, information technology companies are back to hiring in big numbers as Tata Consultancy Services BSE -8.73 %, Infosys BSE -0.30 % and HCL Technologies BSE -9.09 % ramp up recruitment. This is good news to the over 1.5 million engineers who graduate from the country's colleges every year and are struggling to land a job due to an oversupply of talent. Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest IT services company , said it will hire 35,000 freshers for fiscal 2016, boosting its rate of campus recruitment.The company hired 25,000 from campuses in fiscal 2015. Robust growth prospects led to the company raising the figure, TCS' human resources head Ajoy Mukherjee told ET.

TCS will also make 800 offers in the United States as part of its plan to bring 500 freshers from the United States on its rolls in fiscal 2016. In the current financial year, the company is hiring 400 US freshers.

Engineering colleges have also noticed the uptick. Last month, VIT in Tamil Nadu saw Wipro, Infosys and Cognizant, among others, making more offers than the previous year. While Wipro BSE -1.08 % made 1,141 job offers, Accenture made 1,324 offers. Similarly , Infosys made 1,452 offers and Cognizant 1,911. "I think we see more appetite to take on more freshers and entry level hires as well," said Prithvi Shergill, chief human resource officer at HCL Technologies. "I think there will always be fluctuations, but yes, we are seeing an upward trend in entry level hiring." He declined to give the company's fresher hiring numbers for the next financial year. Bangalore-based Infosys has also said it would hire between 15,000-16,000 freshers for the current financial year, a sharp increase from the 6,000 freshers it hired in fiscal 2013. The company has not re vealed its campus hiring figure for the next financial year.

The increased hiring from campuses comes as the IT industry is preparing for higher growth. "It is a good sign because fresher hiring tends to be considered a lead ing indicator for how companies view fu ture demand. While the jobs are good for the freshers, I don't think their starting salaries will be rising," an analyst with a Mumbai based brokerage told ET. He declined to be identified because he is not authorised to talk to the media. IT companies count on freshers to keep costs low. Analyst firm HfS estimated that TCS effectively achieved a 6.3% reduction in average employee costs every year over 2007-2013. During this peri od, the percentage of new graduates hired of the total rose from 50% to 80%.

"Fresher hiring continues and has to con tinue mainly because it is one of the impor tant levers to manage the cost and to ensure that they balance the pyramid," said Sunda raman Viswanathan, management consult ant at Zinnov Management Consultancy .

"The fresher hiring will be there for at least the next three-five years and the levels will be maintained." Part of the reason for this is that wage hikes in the industry have drop0 ped to single digits and starting salaries for a new graduates have been stagnant for over t four years as oversupply and softness in the IT industry pressured wages. TCS' Mukhert jee said the company had not changed fresh er salaries for the offers it had made for the s next financial year.