IT firms are changing the way they hire freshers | Economic Times

IT services firms have started staggering their intake of freshers through the year in order to be more responsive to the changing business environment. At the start of the previous fiscal, several firms had deferred onboarding freshers on account of the uncertainty in the business environment. But now, as services firms deal with a talent crunch, the sector is expected to onboard over 100,000 freshers through the course of the year.Tata Consultancy Services has been selecting trainees through its National Qualifier Test (NQT) for the last few years. “While we continue to induct majority of talent from campuses at the beginning of the year, now that we have NQT being conducted every quarter, we do have the opportunity to hire campus talent during the year as well,” said Girish Nandimath, global head-talent acquisition at TCS. “This has enabled us to tap into the talent abundance and democratized the way we reach, attract, and qualify talent entering into TCS. This has widened our reach multi-fold,” he said. India’s largest services firm recently crossed the 500,000 employees mark and said that it would be hiring 40,000 college graduates in India this year.At Pune-headquartered Persistent Systems, business dynamics and the skill demand upsurge has elevated hiring to a regular activity all 365 days a year, said chief people officer Sameer Bendre. “Fresh graduate hiring is no longer a seasonal venture. We have increased our fresher intake and are building in house talent. Digital world has brought us all closer with sudden disruption in the way of working without compromising on productivity,” he said. Applicants who narrowly miss out on qualifying are provided intensive and smart training before they are onboarded.At the start of FY21, most companies had paused their fresher hiring plans given the uncertainty in the business environment. Building a talent pipeline can take up to one-and-a-half years, said Kamal Karanth, co-founder, Xpheno. Another reason for the staggered hiring, he said, is the difficulty in effectively onboarding several thousand people remotely. While companies have put in systems in place to remotely onboard employees, several of them are onboarding a few hundred people daily. Adding to this would impact how long before the employee is trained well enough to be deployed onto a project, the most important metric at a time like this, he added.Infogain intends to hire 500 freshers this year, rolling out offers and onboarding them quarterly. “The quarterly onboarding helps us train recruits better and allows time to be focused on the new joinees,” said Ayan Mukerji, CEO, Infogain.Staggering the hiring is also helping companies react in real time to the rising attrition numbers and the ever changing demand-supply gap. “As the demand for digital talent explodes, rising attrition in the industry poses a near-term challenge in addressing the demand-supply gap,” said Venkatesh Radhakrishnan, VP & global head-talent acquisition & workforce management at UST. “We plan to meet this demand by expanding our hiring programme of fresh graduates for FY21-22. At UST, we have increased the intake throughout the year to cater to the spike in requirements due to the acceleration of digital transformation and the rise of the digital economy.” Pre-pandemic, the company had a stipulated season for fresher hiring, but has now staggered it through the year in order to meet the changing demand requirements. The company intends to add 2,000 freshers over the course of this year, he said.