Indian IT’s Hiring Rate Set To Plateau As Experience Is Valued Over Capacity

For the past four years, the Indian IT industry has been hiring fewer and fewer people as it grappled with the aftermath of the global financial crash. In the year ended March 2014, the rate was half that of 2010-11.

Now, even as a gradual improvement takes hold in the sector’s biggest market, the United States, the rate of hiring is likely to plateau at current levels, the latest estimates show.

“Industry continues to hire, with increasing focus on skill over capacity,” the IT sector lobby National Association of Software and Services Companies said last month in its latest annual survey of human resources.

Nasscom estimates the industry will add between 170,000 and 180,000 employees in the current fiscal year that ends March 2015. That increase, between 5.4 percent and 5.75 percent, is little changed from the last fiscal year.

This is because India’s top IT companies as well as their multinational rivals with large centers in India are hiring, but with a difference: Their biggest customers are looking to simplify and digitize existing systems and start new ones on the Internet rather than on their own boxes. As a result, the emphasis is much more on skills and experience.

Nasscom adds in its HR report: “Domain knowledge and niche skill requirement to significantly increase lateral hiring.” Lateral hiring refers to recruiting experienced staff rather than raw college graduates.

The figures in the chart were compiled from Nasscom's press releases and report.