IT companies aim to hire as many as 360,000 freshers by the end of this financial year. Fresher hiring booms of the kind we are seeing now haven’t been witnessed for nearly a decade. Earlier, hiring booms sometimes resulted in a significant bust. But salaries haven’t changed much in the past decade. Why aren’t IT firms paying them well?
There has never been a time when Mr. Fresher was so important for India’s IT industry. You see, Mr. Fresher is an indispensable character in the current scheme of things. He is the heart of the business model of IT firms, the base of the pyramid, but sadly, for the past several years — a tragic figure. For perspective, IT companies’ clients don’t want them until they have been at work for at least six months.
Major IT companies have been on a hiring spree for freshers, but their starting salaries are stuck in the same band as earlier
Fresher salaries have ranged between ₹3.5 lakh and ₹4.5 lakh per annum since 2018, up marginally from ₹3.1 lakh to 3.3 lakh in the preceding five years.
The top band of ₹4.5 lakh is typically for candidates who have additional certificates demonstrating proficiency in a particular technology. Those with full-stack digital skills can expect up to ₹7 lakh.
IT companies including TCS, Infosys and Wipro are expected to hire 3.6 lakh graduates this year, but that would still leave over 6 lakh in the job market, indicating excess supply.
Even as clients absorb cost increases for skilled talent, they are refusing to budge on raising fresher pay. “Clients are reluctant to pay to train workers and there is intense pressure to keep pricing, and therefore wages, lower for freshers. It is, therefore, likely that wages for freshers will rise much more slowly than those with experience and we will only see modest increases,” says Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of IT consultancy Everest Research.
It takes anywhere between four and six years for a fresher to be considered skilled in a particular technology, Kamal Karanth, co-founder of staffing firm Xpheno, explains.
(Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com)