IT cos go selective in campus hiring
After a lull in fresher hiring last year, campus placement at engineering colleges is on, albeit at a more moderate level
Bengaluru: Placement from campuses is getting difficult for engineering students as IT firms are becoming more selective in choosing candidates. According to staffing firms, the coming placement season will see one of the most difficult scrutiny for freshers with demand for emerging skills like cloud, data analytics, cyber security and others being preferred by employers.
“Campus placement is going to happen this year with good number of freshers getting offer letters. But companies will be very useful whom they are choosing. Most stringent evaluation methods will be employed,” said Supaul Chanda, Global Business Head at Otomeyt, a talent engineering firm, told Bizz Buzz.
After a lull in fresher hiring last year with many big firms skipping the engineering college campuses altogether, this year a good number of freshers are likely to be absorbed.
However, evaluation methods for selecting a candidate are getting tougher according to sources in the know. For instance, students are asked to write codes to understand their proficiency level. Even cognitive ability tests, personality and other parameters are getting evaluated.
Some staffing firms said new age skills like cloud computing, data science, machine learning, big data, cyber-security, full stack, and DevOpsare in demand. Engineering colleges are training their freshers in these new age skills. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another key skill, which has seen high demand among companies.
“After Generative AI becomes the go to technology of many enterprises, IT firms are expecting some basic knowledge about this technology from students,” said an executive of a staffing firm.
Interestingly, companies have also started deploying AI technology to screen candidates for the final round of interviews.
“Mass hirers like IT firms are our clients who screen candidates through our AI-powered platform,” CEO &Cofounder of Incruiter, Anil Agarwal has told Bizz Buzz.
After hiring record number of freshers in 2021 & 2022, hiring had come to a grinding halt last year. With low demand environment and high bench strength, IT firms were more keen to deploy the existing new recruits to projects and improve employee utilisation levels.
In a recent study done by ISG comprising 22 IT companies that employs 3.3 million IT & business services executives, showed that overall headcount contracted for four consecutive quarters of 2023 after a record hiring in 2021 & 2022.
“Service providers have been delaying hiring - especially at the entry levels - in response to softness in discretionary enterprise spending,” the survey noted. The global consultancy firm has pointed out that companies have to hire more entry-level staffers to man projects in the second half of 2024 as the deal pipeline remains strong.
