India’s third-largest IT firm HCLTech increased headcount by 3,674 employees on a net basis during the March-ended quarter, taking the overall headcount to 225,944. It had hired 2,945 candidates in the previous quarter.

For the full year, the net hiring number stood at 17,067 down 57% from the 39,900 employees hired by the Noida-headquartered firm for the full year in FY22.

Attrition for the quarter stood at 19.5% compared to 21.7% reported last quarter. The 26,734 freshers during the full year missing targets of hiring 30,000 freshers during the fiscal year.

Last week, Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services and Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys reported a net addition of 51,819 people in FY23 compared to 1,57,942 employees in FY22. In the fourth quarter as well, TCS added just 821 people while Infosys reported a decline of 3,611 employees in headcount.

Hiring by India’s two largest software services firms – Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys– crashed by close to two-thirds in the fiscal-ended 2023 compared to last year underscoring the weakness in demand being faced due to macroeconomic challenges and geopolitical strife.

Pain in key markets – North America and Europe -continues to spoil the party for the IT majors and hiring is expected to be even slower this year as uncertainty and lack of decision making has crashed demand.

ET reported in January that the hiring mandates were down by around 70% for the Indian IT sector for the December quarter and 50% down for the September quarter. Also, campus offers given by IT companies have also fallen up to a third compared to last year for 2023 year graduates.The low net hiring of these top firms are a “worry”, human resource industry executives say, despite discounting the last 2-3 years as higher bases or abnormal years due to the surge in digital spending and pandemic-infused demand upcycle, the overall demand sentiment has also weakened which can have a bearing on the future hiring.

Given this situation companies will seek to control employee costs, said experts. Earlier this week, the management of TCS and Infosys have also called out on the demand uncertainty prevailing in the market, pain in North America and unexpected ramp down of projects and delayed decision making with respect to closure of deals.

TCS said that it is bringing in more employees on its payroll in North America to replace subcontractors for long term cost benefits. The company reported flat sequential margin growth on the back of higher onsite employee costs. On a year on year basis, margins were down by 40 basis points.

TCS retained its fresher hiring targets at 40,000 for FY24–a number similar to last year. It also said it will honour all offers and ruled out any compensation cuts in the future.

For the 2023 fiscal, TCS onboarded 44,000 freshers after it had given a target of 45,000-47,000 freshers. While the company did not indicate lateral hiring targets, the management said that the company will decide these requirements based on business demand through the quarters.

Infosys onboarded 51,000 freshers during the 2023 fiscal, slightly above its guidance of 50,000. “We have a leeway for the next few quarters in terms of availability of freshers. We have no specific number for FY24,” said Infosys CFO Nilanjan Roy in response to the future campus hiring numbers.

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