Tech jobs offer much-needed comfort during a stressed-out pandemic period. Information technology (IT) services firms and start-ups are actively seeking talent as enterprise adoption of digital technologies increases products and services demand. There are hundreds of open positions at key technology firms, which are willing to pay a premium to retain and hire talent.
Indian IT services, start-ups and other product companies are hiring 70,000 people across six roles and increasing salaries by an average of 50 to 60 percent, according to a report published by specialized staffing firm Xpheno.
These roles include full-stack developers, data engineers, React Native developers, DevOps, backend engineers and machine learning engineers.
In the past year, candidates with experience between three and eight years have received pay increases ranging from 20 percent to 25 percent.
Over the last few months, the number of job openings has exploded after companies took a cautious approach following the Covid-19 outbreak last year.
A broader trend of enterprises worldwide moving to digital is evident in this development.
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Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji states in his letter to shareholders in the company’s FY21 annual report, ‘Technology is often at the forefront of economic recovery, especially now, after the pandemic has precipitated structural changes across industries and challenged established ways of working.’
The result of this shift, he said, would be a huge outcry for tech talent, which would ultimately drive growth.
According to Premji, the shortage of talent is already happening with companies struggling to find the talent they need to meet growing demand.
Consider Accenture, for instance. The company had 3,000 open positions late last year, which increased to 18,000 in April and now stands at 32,000.
Julie Sweet, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), recently reported that demand for technology professionals is at an all-time high and employee attrition at Accenture has returned to pre-pandemic levels. ‘It is not the highest the company has ever seen. It’s an industry phenomenon and we’re comfortable,’ Sweet said during the call.
Depending on skills and geography, the company is also experiencing an increase in wages. It is resulting in a talent war, which was first flagged by Salil Parekh, CEO, Infosys, back in March.
According to cognizant CEO Brian Humphries, the company got left out of projects because it could not hire the talent it needed.
What are the companies doing?
There are two things companies are doing – offering salary increases and building their own talent pools. Hikes are being planned to retain talent. Following the launch of the first round of raises, TCS, Infosys and Wipro have already announced another round.
Employees at TCS received hikes in April, just six months after receiving salary increases in October 2020.
Both Infosys and Wipro have announced salary increases this year, effective July and September respectively. In addition, Accenture has promoted 1.17 lakh employees, of which 1,200 were appointed to the position of managing director.
As part of the previous interaction, HCL Tech’s Chief Human Resources Officer, VV Apparao, said that the company will now hire more freshers rather than lateral entry candidates in the coming years.
The company hired 40 percent freshers and 60 percent laterals in FY21. In the next few years, the company hopes to increase it to more than 70 percent and build upon in-house talent, particularly in new-age skills.
While the demand for these skills has increased, finding talent externally has become expensive, so reskilling and upskilling have become key factors.
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