Good News For Freshers! Entry-Level Salaries At IT Companies To Rise Upto 60% For Fresh Graduates

New Delhi: With companies focusing more on hiring fresh graduates, salaries of entry-level employees in India’s IT companies continue to rise faster than of mid-level executives. According to reports, the sector may see salaries rise by at least 15% and, in some cases, by as much as 60% for fresh hires. It is to be noted that tech companies are revising the salaries of freshers as part of their new hiring strategies to retain talent and stem attrition, which has been at record levels for the past two quarters.Also Read – Work From Home Likely to Return For Some Again: Check What Airtel, Zomato, Nestle Plan For Their Employees

“The salaries for entry-level engineers has been revised to Rs 4.25 lakh this year from Rs 3.65 lakh. We are also tying up with engineering colleges for courses in analytics and digital content and students who take the courses and clear them will join HCL at ₹6 lakh salary,” HCL Technologies chief human resources officer Apparao V.V. was quoted as saying by livemint.com. Also Read – As COVID Cases Rise, Will Companies Switch to Work From Home Again? Read TCS, HCL And Other Firms’ Plans Here

HCL’s strategy to raise salaries may prompt rival IT firms such as Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and TCS to follow suit. According to the report in the publication,  TCS is working on raising salary packages for graduates of the 2022 batch. TCS and Infosys did not immediately respond to queries. Wipro is maintaining a silent period and will not entertain media queries, while and Cognizant did not respond till press time. Also Read – Infosys Falls Back To Unconventional Tactics To Retain Personnel; NITES Files Complaint

Noida-based HCL plans to hire 45,000 freshers in FY23, almost doubling from last year’s 23,000. In FY22, Infosys recruited 85,000 freshers and plans to hire 50,000 college graduates this year. TCS onboarded close to 78,000 freshers in FY22 and aims to hire about 40,000 graduates from across campuses this year.

As India Inc. tries to keep pace with rising digital adoption and surging demand for cloud-based services, there is growing requirement for experts in programming languages such as Java, Javascript, Python and SQL. Industry body Nasscom said the sector roped in a record 450,000 employees in FY22.

Executives at top IT companies said hiring and training freshers is the only sustainable way to fill demand, as the battle for candidates at senior levels has led to poaching, despite non-compete clauses between the companies to stop candidates from joining a rival firm for roles wherein the project and client details are similar. According to industry estimates, 1.5 million-1.8 million IT engineers graduate every year.

On a trailing-12-month (TTM) basis, Infosys’ attrition rate jumped to 27.7% in the fiscal fourth quarter from 15.2% a year ago, and 25.5% in the December quarter. TCS had the lowest attrition rate in the industry, which rose to 17.4% in the March quarter from 7.2% a year ago and 15.3% in the December quarter.

HCL’s attrition rate was 21.9% at the end of March against 9.9% a year ago.