Hiring set to rise over next 6 months, except in IT; salaries to grow by 4-6%: Teamlease

Despite a challenging period for the Information Technology (IT) sector, Ramani Dathi, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Teamlease Services expects hiring to improve across industries in the coming six months.

"..compared to the last six months, we are expecting the next six months will be better, including IT," said Dathi.

However, the CFO pointed out that currently, the IT sector stands out as an exception as it is experiencing a decline in hiring. This low hiring trend within the IT sector is projected to persist for the next few quarters, with potential implications for campus fresher hiring within the technology domain.

Dathi explained, "IT companies are the only segment where we are seeing a drop in overall hiring trends because the rest of all other industries – be it banking or consumer segments, telecom, across all industries we are seeing a good trend in overall hiring."

She further revealed that attrition backfilling within the IT sector is also decreasing. This drop in hiring extends to campus recruitment, as IT companies have indicated that they won't be visiting campuses during the upcoming quarter.

The impact of these trends is particularly pronounced among India's largest IT companies, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro, and HCLTech. Collectively, these firms reported a substantial decrease in their headcounts, amounting to 22,000 fewer employees. Both TCS and Infosys have hinted at further reductions in headcount in the next quarter.

Vijay Sivaram, CEO at Quess IT Staffing, highlighted that non-tech hiring continues to show promise, experiencing steady growth. "IT services hiring is definitely low, and we are continuing to see a lack of new hires as well as replacement hires. But we continue to see some fair amount of neutral behavior or some amount of small growth happening in the Global Capability Centre (GCC) for technology hiring," explained Sivaram.

While IT hiring faces challenges, the broader non-IT job market appears to be relatively stable. Sivaram noted that there may be a shift in freshers' salary expectations, as there could be lower demand for IT positions. Fresh graduates might consider positions in startups or other roles related to IT-enabled jobs.

Despite these challenges in the IT sector, experts like Sivaram believe that the situation will likely improve in the coming months. "It is the volume of demand that is coming down, which will push people to move outside of pure software roles, potentially leading to a decrease in their average salaries," Sivaram explained.