HCL bucks the trend; says it intends to hire as others continue to fire

Major IT firm HCL Technologies is planning to continue with its recruitment momentum going into the financial year 2023–24 (FY24), The Times of India (TOI) has reported. The CEO of the company, C Vijaykumar, was quoted in the report as saying, "Our aim is to see how best we can train freshers and utilise them on projects. Our supply-side planning metrics show that they can be absorbed."

The company hired more than 27,000 freshers in the financial year 2022–23 (FY23). Some of these fresh hires are still undergoing training. HCL said that it is looking to hire 15,000 freshers to its ranks in FY24. Notably, HCL Technologies is the only company to have declared a number of fresh hires for the year.

Going against the wind

This development assumes significance because the IT sector registered a pandemic-induced boom, which was followed by an uncertain economic outlook soon after. Across the sector, large-scale layoffs were conducted, and thousands of IT employees lost their jobs. Reportedly, the job cuts were made to bring costs down and bolster efficiency.

The firing spree was not limited to back-office jobs and affected big tech companies, including Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet, among others.

According to layoffs.fyi, a website that keeps track of the employees that were fired, so far, a total of 173,880 employees have been fired in 2023. These layoffs happened at 608 tech companies around the world.

An industry-wide trend

Earlier, Business Standard had reported that IT giant Accenture was going to cut jobs in its cost optimisation efforts that would "impact" 2.5 per cent, or 19,000 of its 738,000 employees.
 

In a recent development, accounting firm Deloitte has also told its staff that it plans to cut around 1,200 jobs in the US. According to a report published in the Financial Times, the job cuts at Deloitte will cut 3 per cent of its total workforce at its Risk and Financial Advisory division.

Wipro, another major Indian IT firm, asked freshers to clear a new programme called Project Readiness Programme (PRP). Given the job situation in the sector, industry experts and employees see such measures with suspicion.

Economic uncertainties have resulted in layoffs worldwide, with companies taking steps to 'rationalise' their operations and bring in efficiency.

So far, Amazon has announced 27,000 layoffs in two rounds. In November 2022, Facebook's parent company Meta announced it was laying off 11,000 employees. This was followed by another 10,000 layoffs, announced in March of this year.