20% drop in hiring by top IT firms

Hyderabad: Information technology industry is a platform a huge number of Indian Tech students depend on for employment opportunities. But now the industry is all set to cut down the intake of freshers by almost 20 per cent this year. The dip in the career field is mainly due to two major reasons - elections in the USA and Brexit.

The top IT companies in the market like Cognizant, Wipro, Infosys and TCS have already sent notices to many colleges informing them about the cutdown on recruiting fresh engineering graduates. Moreover, the recruitments are restricted to only a few top colleges unlike before where the companies visited many colleges to take huge intake of students.

On asking NLN Reddy, Chief Placement officer at the CBIT, about the cutdown on recruitment of freshers, he says: “Due to the drop of 20 per cent intake this year, it will obviously have an effect during recruitments.

Our college is planning to train students by shaping the technical skills in the subjects like Big Data, Cloud Computing, Mobile App development, Social Media, Artificial Intelligence as they are the booming subjects now a days. The market is always ready for subjects like these, so our college has started guiding the students for the opportunities that are available in the market.”

On the other hand, there are colleges like Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology who have collaborated with Accenture to fill up the 20 per cent which the other companies are leaving behind.

Accenture has agreed to increase the intake this year as against the regular count of every year, says Ravi Menon, its placement officer. Students have varied options available in the market; all they need to concentrate is on increasing the technical skills.

Santanu Paul from Talentsprint, Software Training Institute, says “Target of the companies these days is to increase the productivity but reduce the intake of people. Automation is one of the reasons for the drop in hiring, the type of requirement has changed and so is the hiring requirement.

There are a few companies that are pulling out the most experienced people in order to escape from paying high salaries to them and prefer taking in the freshers whose careers just begin with lesser salaries than that of experienced ones. All I suggest to the students for this decline in the recruitment is to master themselves in the subject and stay prepared for the market.”

Students have many other opportunities apart from the top IT companies. There are many companies which are not affected due to US elections or Brexit or other reasons. Training oneself for the market needs is the mantra for success, say many college placement officers.

Venkatesh Pentakota, HR at Cigniti Technologies says, “Not all companies are cutting down on the intake of students. Companies like us have increased the intake this year than before. Let it be any elections or even recession, our company will have no effect, we are based on testing completely.”

By:Bhagyashree Kottoori