With the software sector fretting over the sliding dollar and eroding margins, some of the large players are said to have deferred their campus offers for recruitments in fiscal 2009. Some employers, all of them top tier IT exporters, have asked recruits to join almost two quarters later from the regular joining dates for freshers, sources said.
?We have found that campus offers given out by almost all leading IT vendors have been extended, even by two quarters in some cases. We are studying the trend to see if this points to a probable downturn in the sector or to any other factors,? investments advisory management firm Tholons? principal Vinu B Kartha said.
IT staffing company TVA Infotech?s Gautham Sinha said postponing fresher- hiring would help companies improve bench utilization and cut costs. ?Generally, fresh graduates immediately join on bench and are not billable for close to six months. Postponement of hiring plans help companies to improve bench utilization and save costs. This is part of the cautious and project-based hiring pattern that companies are adopting,? he said adding, that it necessarily did not hint at an industry slowdown.
However, all the software majors refused to comment citing the silent period before the third quarter results.
In the past fiscal, margins of the Indian software companies took a beating as the domestic currency rose 12% in value against the dollar. Recruiters said in the current fiscal, the past quarter was the slowest in terms of hiring. The staggered hiring could continue into the following quarters in fiscal 2009.
Headhunters CEO K Lakshmikanth said the IT vendors had begun to be cautious on the hiring front. ?In (calendar year) 2008, confidence levels among IT CEOs were not very high. Concerns are about the rising rupee and possible cuts in IT budgets in the US. There would be a reduction in bench hiring as recruitments become more project- specific,? he added.