Hiring At Indian IT Firms Will Increase From October: Worst Is Over For Indian IT Employees?

The IT sector is the top job creator in the country and acts as an auxiliary sector for many industries. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic resultant lockdowns, the first half of 2020 didn’t witness much growth in terms of hiring process. However, this is likely to change with the commencement of Q3 (Oct-Dec), which is a seasonally weak quarter for IT companies.

Read on to find why this would happen?

COVID-19 Slowed Down The Hiring Process!

Under normal circumstances, the first two quarters (April to September) of the year is the peak for hiring, after which it slows down, says Sanju Ballurkar, president at Experis, the IT recruitment arm of Manpower group India.

Ballurkar said, “But this year, we expect hiring to pick up in Q3 as many of the projects got deferred and we can also expect a tapering of the pandemic from there on after peaking in August.” 

For Q1 that ended on 30 June, the net addition of employees at the top IT companies was the lowest.

This can be cited as the lateral hiring and new joining is being pushed to the later part of the year. 

The headcount of the top IT company in the country, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) dropped by 4,788 employees. Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd, witnessed a decline in the head count by 3,138 and 1,082 respectively on a sequential basis.

The US’ temporary visa ban with  the lack of visas and tough immigration rules is also expected to increase the hiring in Global In-house Centres (GICs) as more outsourcing or off-shoring happens. The GIC is a key segment in India’s IT-BPM sector.

According to the latest Naukri Jobspeak report, the demand for IT professionals grew 21% in the month of June versus May. This can be cited as easing the lockdown restriction after 3 months.The job listings on Naukri.com in June witnessed a 48% month-on-month growth 

However, the overall hiring in the IT industry is still down 42% on a year-on-year (Y-o-Y) basis.

Good News indeed for fresh graduates worrying about their future and other IT employees!

Digital Transformation Increasing In Every Industry!

Many banking institutions and retail firms have commenced their journey of  digital transformation. This is bound to increase the demand for IT services in the future. 

Lohit Bhatia, president, Indian Staffing Federation said, “Robotic process automation (RPA), full stack developer, Python continue to see high demand as well as roles in cloud, cyber security, and analytics. Salesforce, SAP, continue to have large need and other newer skill areas like Kubernetes, Microservices are growing as well.”

“IT hiring in the digital space will rise in a post-pandemic world as “digital solutions have seamlessly dovetailed into the overall business strategy of organizations to ensure better adaptability to the new normal,” said Ramesh Alluri Reddy, director (Managed Services & Professional Staffing), Adecco India. 

It seems as if the Indian IT sector will be the first to recover in the post-pandemic world.