News & Updates

IT Cos Look To Automate Entry-Level Jobs, Reskill Staff

For the first time since 2009, campus recruitment of grads could fall across engineering colleges as companies resort to automation of entry-level coding jobs and look at optimizing their bench strength.

India churns out nearly 16 lakh graduate engineers every year, of which nearly two lakh are absorbed by the IT industry -the largest organized recruiter at the campus. The industry could recruit, at best, 2 lakh engineers from campuses, the same as last year.

“With clients worldwide tightening their IT spends and the IT industry grasping digital and its nuances, IT companies are focusing on strengthening their existing workforce while trying to understand what the future will hold in terms of skills, jobs and work. From a one-time training system, IT companies will need to adopt ongoing and sustainable training while incentivising self learning,“ Nasscom president R Chandrasekhar said.

K Ramachandran, head of strategy at 361Degree Minds, an online training provider, said, “If we go by the muted numbers given by major players, both in previous quarters as well as the informal guidance provided by them, the growth is going to be stunted and this, obviously, would mean lesser new hands would be necessary .“ Tech titans begin campus visits in September and conduct tests and interviews for students who have completed their fifth semester.

Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka recently announced that the company would focus on a zero-bench strategy to increase utilization levels. Cognizant reported a substantial drop in net additions to its workforce in the previous quarter. TCS reported a fall in Q1 attrition rate with the company taking steps to control loss of employees. It also reported a dip in net additions as compared to the earlier quarter.

The IT industry currently employs 3.7 million people with around 2 lakh net additions in 2015-16, lower than 2.2 lakh additions in 2014-15.

(ToI)