Numbers to skills: IT giants reinvent hiring playbooks

India's top IT firms are aiming to cut costs while building a more specialized workforce

- Jas Bardia

India's 10 largest information technology (IT) services companies are rewriting their hiring playbooks. Instead of the conventional approach of adding tens of thousands of freshers in bulk, they are leaning on their existing bench strength—redeploying engineers into live projects and hiring new recruits only where specific skills or specializations are needed. From TCS and Infosys to HCL Technologies Ltd, Wipro, and their mid-tier peers, the common thread is to boost utilization, control costs, and build a workforce shaped less by numbers and more by expertise.

Seven of these outsourcers—Infosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd, LTIMindtree Ltd, Coforge Ltd, Mphasis Ltd, Persistent Systems Ltd and Hexaware Technologies—utilized more of their existing workforce in the previous quarter, and at least two are shying away from hiring executives in bulk even as their hiring plans remain intact.