Class of 2022: Too many freshers, too few jobs

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The headwinds in the economy are wreaking havoc in the job markets with thousands of freshers from the class of 2022 still on the lookout for jobs, The Economic Times has reported. Many of the job seekers are from front-ranking technology and management colleges. Experts are calling it a ‘fresher glut’ that has been primarily caused by too many young professionals including both fresh-from-the-college and those with up to a couple of years of experience.

This year the pool of freshers has been beefed up with a higher-than-usual number of candidates from the 2022 batch of engineers and business school graduates.

The surplus is largely attributable to the fact that almost 45% candidates from last year’s batch are already scouring the market for switching jobs. This share is usually around 25% in normal years. The report has depended on data from HirePro, a hiring, assessment and interview platform, to arrive at the conclusion.

The situation will get more adverse for the freshers as those from 2023 and 2024 would join the queue. Those looking for a change of jobs pertain to sectors such as consulting, IT services and startups.

“Our estimates suggest nearly 20-30% of the offers from the 2023 batch are delayed or revoked…. This means the 2022 batch is already competing with the 2023 batch. In a few months, the 2024 batch will be in the job market, thus creating a very large talent pool,” said Pasupathi Sankaran who is the chief operating officer of Hirepro.

“Making it more difficult for the existing batch is the fact that the previous batches have the added advantage of gaining on-job market, experience for a year or so, a factor being looked at by recruiters,” he added.

Those who are experts in the job market experts think this could trigger challenges when many recruiters want to consider talent with some experience and who can hit the ground running. Companies, particularly those in technology-related sectors and startups need to hire people who can start functioning from day one and do not increase the wage bill adding to the non-billable bench.

Worse, this situation comes against the backdrop of the upcoming placement season at business schools and engineering institutes. Experts felt that while the front-ranking institutions, would feel the pinch less, the second and third-category institutes could be severely impacted.

“Our estimates show a decline in hiring of freshers by about 15-20% for the batch which graduated in June-July 2023 compared to a year ago,” said Ciel HR Services CEO Aditya Narayan Mishra.

“Companies across all sectors of the economy are focused on cost optimisation and efficiency improvement… we see many people who graduated in 2022 and 2023 have not yet found the jobs they aspired for,” he added.

Sonal Arora, country manager at GI Group Holding India, was of the opinion that there is plenty of entry-level talent compared even to the pre-Covid times. “It is indeed more than regular years. While 2022 was an exceptional year for fresher/entry level talent with high resurgence in demand, even compared to pre-Covid levels, the supply of talent is more than demand in many sectors like IT services, ITeS, startups, profession- al services and consulting, which have been impacted by macroeconomic headwinds,” she said.