Deluge of freshers vies for trickle of it jobs

1. Deluge of Freshers Vies
for Trickle of IT Jobs
Significant jump in percentage of fresh engineering grads
accepting campus offers in past 3-4 years

2. Contd…
As the number of jobs in India's $160-billion information technology industry starts
shrinking with each passing year, engineering graduates across are scrambling for
every vacancy in a sector that was once a big employment generator.
The percentage of fresh engineering graduates accepting campus offers from
India's largest software firms such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro
has jumped significantly in the past three-four years, according to company data
and executives.
For instance, at Wipro, job acceptance rates have risen to 85% from 65% three
years ago, said an ex ecutive who didn't want to be named. Others said this mirrors
the industry average of 80-85% now against 65-70% in FY12.
Applications are surging trebling at Infosys to 1.16 million in FY16 from FY13's
379,000.
Experts said this is a reflection of the demand supply mismatch.

3. Contd…
India produces 1.5 million enginee ring graduates every year while the
available jobs are pegged at 200,000-250,000, according to a recent Kotak
Institutional Equities report. “The number of engineers graduating currently
is far too high. And absolutely , there is a demand-supply imbalance because
of that,“ said Vivek Kulkarni, former IT secretary in the Karnataka
government. “When you have a large number of youngsters coming into the
job market, you need the economy to be growing at an extremely high rate
to match that supply , which is not happening right now.“
The high job acceptance rates are not restricted to the top companies. A
similar story is unfolding across the rest of the industry, which currently
employs well over 3 million. According to executives, headhunters, recruiters
and placement heads at a number of tier-I and tier-II engineering colleges,
job acceptance rates on average have jumped well over 10 percentage points
in the past three years.

4. Contd…
“This is an inevitable fallout of the overall demand-supply imbalance that
you're seeing across the industry,“ said the Wipro executive cited above.“As
growth rates have fallen over the past decade, the number of jobs has
shrunk and there are fewer options available for graduates. Gone are the
days when they could pick between three-four different job offers.“
With the advent of automation, which can potentially wipe out thousands of
repetitive, manual IT tasks at large customers such as General Electric and
Citigroup, newly minted engineering graduates face a bleak future.
According to a recent report by HfS Research, India's IT services industry will
lose 6.4 lakh “low-skilled“ jobs to automation in the next five years. By 2021,
HfS said the IT industry worldwide will see a net decrease of 9% in
headcount, or about 1.4 million jobs, with countries like the Philippines, the
UK and US also taking hits, ET reported earlier this week.

5. Contd…
“Broadly speaking, it's now going to be all about skill, not scale,“ said
Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president at industry lobby group Nasscom.“If
students continue relying on what is being taught in colleges, much of which
is fast becoming redundant, then they will be in for a tough time. They have
no choice but to re-skill themselves.“
According to latest All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) estimate,
only 1 million engineering jobs are likely to be created over the next five
years, implying that millions of graduates may find themselves unemployed.
Placement heads at colleges said job acceptance rates have jumped
significantly in the past few years, partly because of fewer options from the
IT services industry.

6. Contd…
“We are currently seeing acceptance rates of well over 90%,“ said KS Sridhar, dean
of placements at People's Education Society Institute of Technology in Bengaluru.
“Earlier, the range used to be around 80%.What we are seeing is increasing
maturity amongst students when it comes to accepting job offers. Part of the
reason is also due to the lower number of offers from the services industry.“
The broader demand-supply crisis in the IT sector has effectively shifted the
balance of power in favour of India's top IT firms, which can adopt more flexible
recruitment methods.
“Excess supply will give companies flexibility to recruit in line with requirements.
We have already seen this departure in the case of the IT industry: Companies now
recruit in the first half of the eighth semester from the sixth semester (18 months
in advance) earlier,“ said analysts Akhilesh Tilotia and Jaykumar Doshi in the Kotak
Institutional Equities report. A graduate programme in India has eight semesters
over four years.

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