Delayed projects and overall slump in the IT services segment are forcing tech majors to push back joining dates of freshers.

IT majors such as Infosys and Mahindra Satyam are all grappling with their existing bench before they can accommodate fresh recruits.

While Infosys is understood to be going slow on-boarding the freshers it hired from the campuses, some freshers at Wipro and TCS have complained of delayed induction to keep the bench sizes slim.

“Based on business imperatives and manpower requirements, we expect our on-boarding of fresh hires to be completed by first quarter of FY14,” an Infosys official said.

Some newly hired staff in Mahindra Satyam would come to office to swipe and leave as there are no projects readily available. The company has not gone to campuses for big ticket hiring in the last two years as it is still saddled with the 5,000 freshers it gave offer letters in 2010. It could induct only two-thirds of them so far.

Though it is not new for companies to defer induction, the number of such incidence is on the raise of late.

With the slowdown threatening to hurt revenues, the companies have become conservative and putting a cap on induction fearing cost inflation.

“People say if you don’t get to work on a project for more than 5-6 months, chances of losing the job is very high,” a Mahindra Satyam staffer said on condition of anonymity.

Joining dates

An executive from a Delhi-based IT firm said that it was a norm in the industry to hire only when a project is being conceptualised. “If a project is being delayed then we ask them to join on some other date or month,” he said. It is learnt that some of the tech firms have deferred joining dates for freshers from August to October.

Mr Bhaskar Chavli, Chief Delivery Officer of NIIT Technologies, said problem comes in when there are intakes for huge staff on projects basis, and delayed projects are the only reason for such push back in date of joining for some companies. “We do not have that issue. Around 5-7 per cent of our workforce comes from campuses to make a balanced structure to the company,” he said.

Wipro and TCS, however, have claimed that they are on course to honour the offer letters. TCS says the number could be higher than the last year’s as business prospects improved.

But when confronted by students at a meeting on the issue of reported delay in joining dates of freshers, a top TCS official avoided a direct answer and said: “You don’t have to worry about that. Acquire additional skills meanwhile.”

(With inputs from Venkatesh Ganesh in Bangalore, Ronendra Singh in New Delhi and Priya Sheth in Mumbai.)

> kurmanath.kanchi@thehindu.co.in

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