The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : IT jobs to be tough for 2010 batch students

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Monday, Apr 20, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

IT jobs to be tough for 2010 batch students

The usual June hirings are unlikely to take place this year

Recruitments in the IT industry are likely to start only in 2011
Organisations did “honour” job offers but gave “deferred joining” letters

HYDERABAD: Even if the economy starts reviving at the end of 2009, as is being perceived, recruitments in the IT industry are likely to start only in 2011.

And fresh recruitments are likely to be very less and no offers are likely to be made to the batch passing out from engineering colleges in 2010.

Industry sources attribute this to several companies deferring the joining date of candidates recruited last year.

Tough competition

“It is going to be very tough with 10 eligible candidates competing for every job,” predicts Amit Bansal, CEO, PurpleLeap, a pioneer in entry level skill management.

He says IT industry accounted for almost 70 per cent of hiring of freshers across engineering colleges with the peak period being between May 2006 and early part of 2008 when they offered one lakh jobs each year, at least 10,000 more than the projected demand.

Interpreting the past recruitment data, he says in the year 2007, IT companies actually faced a shortfall. The actual demand was more than the offers made.

This opened the gates for freshers but many did not take up the offers.

It led to most IT services companies experiencing a 20 per cent shortfall from the actual business demand.

To bridge the gap, last year IT firms made offers 10 per cent higher than the projected demand.

With signs of recession by middle of 2008, the actual demand was lower than the projected demand creating an excess pool of about 20,000 candidates.

Organisations did “honour” the job offers but gave “deferred joining” letters to such candidates.

Therefore, some of the candidates who graduated in June 2008 are going to join only now i.e. April 2009.

Logical conclusion

It is logical to assume that given the slowdown, most companies would cut down on their hiring plans for the year 2009 since bulk of hiring had already taken place.

It also means the usual June month fresh hirings are unlikely to take place.

Excess hiring

Mr. Bansal says that companies made an excess hiring of 30,000 for the batch of 2009 (recruited in early 2008) and combined with the 20,000 excess offers of the year 2008, there are 50,000 more employees than required in the IT/IT enabled firms.

With the joining date for the batch of 2009 deferred to as late as June 2010, students passing out next year will find fewer jobs offers since their immediate seniors with deferred joinings will be cannibalising the demand for the year.

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