The state of new IT jobs in India looks bleak. The coronavirus outbreak has completely wreaked havoc on the Indian economy. Amid this situation, most businesses and companies are now choosing to either roll back or putting on hold their plans to hire new freshers. This is being done so that they can cut back a significant portion on their expenses.
In the IT sector, many technology graduates who had already received offer letters from established Information Technology firms have now been told to wait indefinitely because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
TCS aka Tata Consultancy Services which is one of India’s largest software and IT services company has been reportedly found to have put increments and lateral hiring on hold. However, they have said that they will continue with hiring fresh graduates but suspend their accelerated onboarding. This suspension has been levied because all college examinations have been postponed due to the outbreak.
Rajesh Gopinathan who is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of TCS in a statement said that they have more than 30,00 offers which are outstanding on trainee and on-campus recruits which they will most certainly honour in the future.
He further added that the company levied the suspension keeping in mind that all major university exams got delayed to June-July, after which they will resume bringing fresher graduates on board.
All major IT companies such as Accenture, Tech Mahindra Ltd, TCS, Infosys and Wipro have now put in place online onboarding programmes amid this coronavirus outbreak.
These programmes are very well capable of training as well as on-boarding freshers online with ease. All these companies have indicated that they will be honouring their commitments to hiring new freshers once this situation loses its severity.
In FY20, the IT industry in India hired a whopping 205,000 new employees as a whole according to the data from Nasscom. The hiring of freshers in India was driven by TCS which added 30,000 fresh technology graduates.
In contrast to that, in FY21, TCS has confirmed that they are going to increase the number of new hires to 39,000. Other major firms such as Infosys has already made 18,000 new offers for FY21 along with Wipro which said will on-board 20,000 new graduates.
HCL technologies also informed that they are willing to hire 15,000 new freshers in FY21. It is important to note here that these promises were made in the Q4 2019, long before the COVID-19 situation affected us all.
Last week, the Chief Executive Officer of Wipro, Abidali Neemuchwala in an earnings call said that the company is now looking to defer their hiring schedule this time. He also mentioned that they have already hired 12,000 people last fiscal.
Kris Lakshmikanth who is the Founder Chairman and CEO of HeadhuntersIndia.in a statement said that the entire job scenario in India as of now is not looking good as almost all major companies have put hiring on hold.
He also further added that it is primarily because these companies, at present, do not have any work to give to these new graduates or trainees as most of their contracts have either been paused or cancelled because of the COVID-19 situation. Besides, the companies also believe that WFH can’t be offered to freshers considering the requires a lot of training and co-ordination before they start working on any project.
For students who are now looking at an uncertain future when it comes to employment, the best decision they can undertake now is to upgrade their existing skills. This will help their chances of employability increase significantly once the hiring conditions in India are favourable for companies.
As indicated by most companies, hiring will slowly gain momentum once this pandemic situation starts loosening its grip on India. However, it is still uncertain whether these corporate giants will be able to uphold their promises when it comes to their previously proposed number of hires they were gonna make for FY21. We will keep you posted on all future developments.
