IT cos to axe 2,500 new hires who flunked screening tests

IT firms likely to let go of about 2,500 new hires who flunked screening tests

Indian software service providers may let go of around 2,500 recent recruits for failing screening tests mere months after they were onboarded, even as some industry experts claimed the downsizing resulted from companies taking on more people than they needed during the pandemic.

"We expect around 2,500-plus freshers to be removed from these companies due to poor performance, post-training," said Anshuman Das, chief executive and co-founder of Careernet, a talent solutions provider. The hit is larger this year as the number of campus hires has been lower than in the past two years of the covid-19 pandemic.

The screening tests typically take place within a year of a campus recruit joining an IT firm and are done to assess whether the new hires will match the requirements of ongoing client projects. Das estimated that about 2% of around 200,000 recruits from engineering colleges in FY23 might not clear these tests. Typically, freshers who fail to clear these screening tests are around 1% of the total hires.

Media reports said Infosys may let go of 600 employees who failed screening tests.

Wipro, too, let go of a few hundred. We had to let go of 452 freshers after they performed poorly in assessments repeatedly, even after training,” Wipro said in response to Mint’s queries.