IT firms may focus on tiered hiring strategy

Freshers selected through this plan get better pay

- SHIVANI SHINDE

As the job markets open up, top IT services firms may look at a tiered strategy in which they hire entry-level talents at higher salaries, amid a major technological shift, say HR analysts.

About five years ago, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Accenture, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, and Capgemini, among others, were the companies who had formulated this strategy.

"IT services companies were losing talented freshers to MNCs and differentiating the engineers based on assessments has given them the ability to financially bucket these grads into different pay packets. This allowed them to hire highly skilled and in some cases freshers from premier colleges at higher pay brackets," said Kamal Karanth, founder and CEO, Xpheno, a specialist staffing enterprise.

A fresher joining the IT services sector gets anywhere from ₹3.25 lakh to ₹3.5 lakh per annum. Freshers who get selected through this tiered framework can get salaries that range from ₹6.25 lakh to ₹12 lakh per annum.

With the campus hiring in the slow lane, hiring under this tiered framework has also taken a hit, but campus placement heads and HR specialists that Business Standard spoke to opined that with artificial intelligence and new-age technologies in focus, this strategy will now become the core focus area.