DBT Bureau
Bengaluru, 3 July
The hiring trend in the first quarter of the current financial year is not likely to see any significant improvement as Indian IT firms still have a considerable number of reserved employees or bench.
According to brokerage firms, some IT firms may see a marginal uptick in total employee count.
“Hiring is expected to be moderate (baring a few names). The current demand slowdown, headroom for further improvement in utilization (on freshers), and moderating attrition are more than compensating the required resource fulfilment,” the brokerage firm, Prabhudas Lilladher said in a note. “Additionally, the industry bench rate has trimmed substantially to 10-15%, from around 30% earlier, leading to slower talent recruitment,” it said.
Indian IT firms significantly reduced their headcount in FY24 after two years of record hiring. In the fourth quarter alone, the top five Indian IT companies reported a reduction of almost 70,000 employees.
However, recently global IT firm Accenture showed rise in its headcount in Q3, raising hopes of a similar trend among Indian firms.
Analysts point out that without meaningful recovery in the demand environment, Indian IT companies will not start hiring in big numbers.
“Hiring in the first quarter likely to see some uptick among a few players but overall sentiment is yet to recover,” said an HR expert.
In its annual general meeting held recently, Infosys said that it still sees scope for improvement in its employee utilisation levels. “Our utilization has improved during the previous financial year, and we believe we have some headroom there as well to improve this further towards a comfortable level of 84-85%,” Infosys management has said.
Meanwhile, as compared to large IT services companies, some mid-tier firms in the engineering services space are likely to show an uptick in their employee count in the first quarter.
Indian IT firms will start reporting their Q1 FY25 numbers from the second week of July onwards.
