India's Top IT Companies Hire Less

CHENNAI: Last year something unprecedented happened in the top Indian software companies. As a bunch, they hired less number of people in 2007-08 than they did the previous year.

For years, the burden on the recruiters in India's top six IT companies - TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Satyam and HCL Tech - has been going only up and up. If they hired 100 people one year, they could safely assume that they will have to hire anywhere between 125 to 150 people the next.

But, last year they had to hire only 97. These six companies made addition of 89,868 people in 2007-08, about 2500 less than 92,412 people they hired dur-ing the previous year.

Going by early indications, this year could be as bad. In the earnings call, none of the companies have been very enthusiastic on the hiring front. Engineering colleges, traditionally the recruitment bastion for IT companies, are feeling the pinch already and they expect the campus intake to come down by at least 15-20% this year.

There is no single reason, industry players say. A combination of drivers including temporary hiccups such as thinner margins, long term trends such as movement towards fixed bid pricing, desired goals such as higher productivity has made top companies relatively less greedy for its most important resource.