IT sector cuts campus hires

Increased focus on automation and cutting down on bench strength and the fear that the number of H1B visas could go down have resulted IT service companies halving campus recruitments from engineering colleges.

Barring top colleges, campus recruitment has come down in terms of both the number of colleges and number of offers.

Mr K. Sunil Kumar, general secretary of the TS Private Engineering College Managements Association, said the impact was clearly seen in a comparison of the recruitment figures in the last two years.

“Campus hiring is limited to leading colleges this year. The Tier-2 colleges have not figured in the plans of IT companies,” he said.

IT service companies that recruit engineering graduates from TS, mostly from the state capital, include Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, Accenture and Capgemini.

Executive director of the city-based SP Software Jayaram Subramanian said achieving complete automation was not possible in the IT industry. “At the most, 20 per cent automation can be seen and that too on the testing side. The industry cannot run without human intervention. The present dip in recruitments is due to external factors.”

He said companies were adopting a waitand-watch attitude. If the Trump administration cuts down on H-1B visas, all leading IT companies would have to bring back their Indian employees working on different projects there, he said.

Osmania Engineering College chief placement officer V. Uma Maheshwar said the impact was negligible in the OU College of Engineering.