IT hiring goes on even as Covid 2.0 rages

Bengaluru: Despite the unrelenting second wave of the pandemic, hiring momentum is unlikely to slacken up in the IT industry.

Experts are of the opinion that overall hiring in the first quarter of the ongoing fiscal FY22 will be at least 20 per cent more than the same period of last fiscal.

"In the current quarter (April-June), hiring will be at least higher by 20 percent than the year-ago period. Last year, hiring was subdued during this period owing to the first wave of the pandemic," said Aditya Narayan Mishra, Director and CEO of CIEL HR Services.

He also said that during the Jan-March quarter of fiscal 2021, hiring momentum was also robust as compared to same period a year ago.

According to experts, higher attrition rate and employee utilisation levels are the key factors driving this trend.

Country's second largest IT firm Infosys witnessed employee attrition going up by 5.2 per cent at 15.2 per cent in Q4 of FY21 as compared to 10 per cent reported in the previous quarter.

Similarly, Wipro has also seen attrition level going up by 110 basis points to 12.1 per cent during fourth quarter. Market leader TCS was the only exception, whose attrition level fell to 7.2 per cent in the IT services space from 7.6 per cent reported in the previous quarter. In the employee utilisation front, Infosys' employee utilisation excluding trainees touched 140 basis points at 87.7 per cent. Similarly, Similarly, Wipro's employee utilisation stood at 86 per cent during this period.

Apart from high attrition and utilisation levels, rising employee absenteeism is another factor responsible for addition of new employees. "IT firms require more hands for smooth project delivery as many employees are reporting sick due to the infection. Also, the hiring process has been streamlined in the last one year (with virtual onboarding)," said Pareekh Jain, an IT outsourcing advisor and founder of Pareekh Consulting.

During the post earnings conference call, the top four IT services companies- TCS, Infosys, HCL Technologies & Wipro- are likely to hire around one lakh fresh college graduates in FY22.

TCS has said that it is looking to bring 40,000 freshers on board in FY22, which will push up its total employee count above 5 lakh. Similarly, Infosys said that it would hire 26,000 engineering graduates from campuses in the current financial year. Though Wipro didn't provide any specific number, it said it would be hiring more fresh graduates this fiscal over last fiscal year. In FY21, it had hired 9,000 college graduates. Earlier, HCL Technologies had said that the Noida-headquartered firm would hire 12,000 freshers in the current financial year.

"Hiring momentum was so strong in the January-March period that 30-40 per cent candidates dropped out as they had better offers. We see the demand for IT engineers to continue in the current quarter (despite the pandemic)," Mishra of CIEL HR Services said.