Only 10% of the 1.5 million engineers graduating this financial year are expected to be hired in India, TOI reported citing a study. This due to the macroeconomic challenges pushing IT companies to slash fresher hiring by 35-40% compared to the previous financial year.
Hiring of engineering graduates is likely to reach pre-pandemic levels, with 160,000 freshers expected to get hired as compared to 2,30,000 recruited in FY23, according to a report by tech staffing and solutions provider TeamLease Digital. The drop in hiring is due to employer's upper hand in the employment market.
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TeamLease Digital business head Krishna Vij said that employers prefer mid-level professionals with seven to 12 years of experience over recruiting freshers. She also mentioned that just around 45% of the total engineering graduates this year fulfil market criteria and that skill criteria will be critical.
"With evolving job dynamics, companies are looking for talent that comes with a combination of soft skills like communication, problem-solving, teamwork, emotional intelligence along with technical proficiency in programming languages, software development methodologies, cloud computing and data analytics," she added.
She continued that freshers can up their hiring chances by focusing on continuous learning and upskilling in areas such as data science, AI & machine learning, and cybersecurity.
Fresher hiring had peaked to 4,00,000 and attrition levels had surged to over 30% in FY22 as businesses across sectors embarked on a digital transformation journey. Currently, the attrition rate has dropped to an average of 16-18%.
However Vij also said that there is a silver lining. She mentioned that demand is opening up in alternate sectors with global capability centres.
"Demand is opening up in alternate sectors with global capability centres [GCCs], and non-tech sectors like BFSI [banking, financial services and insurance], media, retail and consumer business, life-sciences & healthcare, engineering R&D as well as energy expanding entry-level hiring," said Vij.