'Top 5 IT firms to hire 180,000 this yr'

Indian Information and Technology (IT) sector seems to be back to its record-breaking hiring days, with top player Infosys projecting up to 180,000 employees being hired by the five largest companies this year alone.

“Growth is back and most companies are hiring in large numbers again. The top five companies are estimated to hire 160,000-180,000 new employees in the next 12 months,” Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan said here today.

Such large-scale hiring activities were last witnessed by Indian IT companies in 2007, after which they had to cut back on hiring and even prune their existing headcount to cope with the economic slowdown.

“In 2008, the industry saw growth coming down to single digit. Most companies stopped hiring and expanding,” Gopalakrishnan said at an event last evening. More than 400,000 jobs were created by all the companies in 2007. However, it fell to 250,000 people in 2008 and further to 150,000 in 2009. It was just above 100,000 in 2010.

He said growth was back and companies were expanding their headcount. He added, “The IT industry has grown quickly over the last 15 years. For example, it had about 1,50,000 employees in 1993 and around 5,00,000 in 1999. Today, it employs around two million people.”

Industry estimates suggest that overall hiring by all the IT companies during 2011 could exceed or at least match 2007-levels. Besides Indian IT firms, global giants like IBM, Accenture and HP have also been hiring aggressively in the past.