Rise of the non-engineering grads

As the scout for talent grows Indian IT companies are going to recruit a larger number of non-engineering graduates this year. These are graduates in mathematics, science subjects and MCAs. Typically, every year the IT companies hire 5% of their recruits from non-engineering backgrounds. But this year it is going to be about 10%. Nothing can be a better indicator of the growth of this sector as the economy opens up following the waning of the second wave of infection. The more the demand for non-engineering grads, the stronger the indication of recovery.

 The Indian IT industry biggies are all on a hiring spree this year. Projections put the figure for hiring between 1.6 lakh to 2 lakh. Information technology is one of the sectors that actually benefitted from the pandemic since almost all companies had to recast their business in order to adapt to remote working and remote selling. The growth in business has also led to higher attrition rates in some prominent companies. TCS, the country’s biggest IT company that employs 5.2 lakh people, witnessed attrition rates rising from 8.6% in April-June quarter to 11.6% in the July-September quarter of this year.

The growth rates of IT salary bill were 7.3%, 5.5%, 6.8%, 8.6% in the four quarters of the last financial year. In Q1 of FY22 (April-June), the wage bill again rose by 16.4% indicating the buoyancy in this sector as more and more industries globally hired their services to reorient their business during the pandemic.

The more non-engineering graduates are employed by the IT sector the better the signal for students pursuing these courses. Over the past several years, students of general science streams suffered a dim view of employability. Now if the likes of TCS, Infosys and Wipro employ students from these disciplines in bigger numbers, it would be a signal for the industry to rediscover their potential.