'No bulk hiring anytime soon' as IT companies navigate tricky ground

India’s software exporting firms were waiting for the ongoing global volatility to recede as IT hiring remained on precarious ground in the ongoing financial year 2025-26 (FY26), and may swing either way.

 

The IT companies have been one of the biggest employers in the organised sector for the last three decades.

 

But the ongoing volatile macroeconomic environment and tepid demand from clients -- as they rein in their technology budgets -- have raised concerns that the hiring in the current financial year may remain muted.

 

“With weak discretionary spending, delayed deal ramp-ups, and bench overcapacity, hiring remains muted. Firms are closely tracking macro indicators and bulk hiring may not return soon. The main focus is on upskilling and internal deployments and niche hiring as the sentiment is cautious,” Krishna Vij, Vice President of IT staffing at TeamLease Digital, told Business Standard.

 

TCS and Infosys did most of the net hiring in the last financial year, followed by Tech Mahindra while Wipro added very few people. HCL, on the other hand, saw a net decline in its number of employees due to a divestiture last year.

 

The financial year 2023-24 (FY24) saw headcounts tanking significantly by 69,167, while India’s top five IT services providers added 12,718 campus hires next year in FY25.

 

However, the total hiring numbers for FY25 pale in comparison to FY22, when the five IT companies hired 273,377 people, one of the highest in recent times. That was driven by a spurt in deals from enterprises at the fag-end of the pandemic-era keen to undergo a digital transformation and take a lot of their activity to the cloud.

 

The numbers have been on the decline since as companies tried to rationalise their workforce after that. But it was also driven by the fact that automating a lot of entry-level jobs reduced the need to hire in bulk. Writing codes, one of the basic jobs of a software engineer, has also been automated in various enterprises to varying degrees. 

 

Industry experts say that hiring trends for the last year suggest that companies are navigating a recalibration phase. While some organisations have reported marginal additions, others continue to restructure and optimise their talent base. Companies are continuously reassessing their workforce strategies amid global uncertainties and rapid technology interventions in the context of AI and automation.

 

Infosys and TCS are expected to hire 20,000 and 42,000 fresh engineering graduates this financial year. Wipro said it will recalibrate its campus hiring programme based upon the demand environment while HCL Technologies will determine the numbers every quarter.

 

Tech Mahindra, which reported its fourth quarter results on Thursday, also said it was too early to “reflect on the quantum of hiring” for the full year.

 

“It will depend on the demand. At present there is some volatility and muddiness and we hope it will improve with time,” CEO and managing director, Tech Mahindra, Mohit Joshi said.

 

It remains to be seen how these hiring will pan out which will largely depend on project ramp ups and more deal inflows. Any further deterioration will perhaps force the companies to go cautious. HR firms say that demand from IT services companies have already started to slow down.

 

“Looking ahead, a wait-and-watch approach appears to be the strategy that most companies will adopt. We expect organisations to remain cautious in their hiring decisions, aligning workforce strategies with evolving client demands and the broader digital transformation landscape. That said, there has been a noticeable uptick in the demand for specialised talent, with a gradual increase in hiring across areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and data analytics,” Milind Shah, Managing Director of Randstad Digital in India, said.