IT giants rekindle campus hiring drive

Bengaluru: After a lull of two years, IT biggies have slowly started the process of hiring freshers from engineering college campuses. As signs of stabilisation emerged during the second quarter of current financial year, IT firms are feeling confident of onboarding fresh college graduates after going slow in recent years.

“People may be living in a post Pandemic euphoria (with relation to hiring). Hiring has always been very dynamic (except for post pandemic period). The quantum of hiring has been very significant (of freshers) in past years because of recruitment surge by startups, IT firms and others. So, hiring has been going on where it is,” Siva Prasad Nanduri, CEO of staffing firm, Diensten Tech, told Bizz Buzz.

“Some of the jobs have been automated due to AI. However, there is good amount of selective hiring happening even on the fresher side,” he added.

Sources in the know said that pre-placement talks with reputed engineering institutions like IITs have already started. Usually, campus visits by companies start from December onwards in these colleges and universities. Even for tier-II and tier-III engineering colleges, current season is expected to be better than last two years.

“Campus visits of some IT companies have started. Pre-placement offers are also issued to some students. It is likely to be better than last year,” said an executive of a prominent engineering college in Eastern India.

Signs of fresher hiring gaining momentum came during the second quarter results (Q2FY26) announcement of Indian IT services companies.

Infosys has hired around 12,000 freshers in the first half of FY26, and is on track to hire 20,000 freshers for the full fiscal year. HCLTech added 5,196 freshers during the second quarter of ongoing financial year. Similarly, Wipro onboarded 2,900 freshers during July-September period.

Interestingly, IT biggies as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, HCLTech, and Wipro are in the process of meeting their fresher hiring targets for current financial year. Management of these companies had said campus recruitment would be higher this time than previous year.

Meanwhile, recruiters are looking for hiring engineering graduates with specific skillsets which are currently in demand. Students with skills in artificial intelligence, data science, cyber security and cloud are preferred as most entry-level jobs are getting automated through AI.

Industry experts said students are also expected to have good knowledge of using generative AI apps in project execution work.