Why has Wipro not yet begun recruiting on campuses? An official clarifies

Why has Wipro not yet begun recruiting on campuses? An official clarifies

The business has not yet finished onboarding freshers who got offer letters during the post-Covid recruiting frenzy, according to Wipro's chief human resources officer (CHRO), Saurabh Govil.

As of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024, Wipro has reported a headcount fall for six straight quarters and a second consecutive full year of declines. However, the major in IT services has no plans to return to college in the near future in search of fresh talent.

The business has not finished onboarding freshers who got offer letters during the post-Covid recruiting frenzy, according to Wipro's chief human resources officer (CHRO), Saurabh Govil.

Furthermore, Wipro intends to enhance its operational efficiency by prioritising the deployment of benched staff and raising its utilisation rate, in light of the unstable demand environment.

"Campus hiring is a combination of looking at demand, utilisation, and when the hiring is going to happen," Govil said at the company's Q4 results call. This quarter, we have achieved an all-time high in utilization thanks to considerable improvements. Our goal is to maintain and grow that. We've been able to deploy personnel more quickly and minimize the size of our bench.

In Q4, Wipro's utilization increased to 86.9% from 84 percent.

Although the attrition rate has decreased dramatically year over year from 19.4% in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year, it has stayed unchanged QoQ at 14.2%.

"After COVID, we went to the campuses and made a large number of offers," Govil said. "The year before last, there was huge demand." We still have all those offers to complete. Before we leave and employ someone else, we will make sure that we keep our pledge to honor all of those offers. That is our strategy going ahead.

"This year, we'll be inducting freshmen, but I don't currently know how many. Demand will determine it since the macro situation is still unpredictable, he said.

On April 19, Wipro revealed a 6,180 staff decrease during the fourth quarter.

In FY24, Wipro's workforce decreased by 24,516 for the whole year, marking the second consecutive quarter of such a decline. The total number of employees for FY24 was 2,34,054.

Wipro was not the only employer to cut down recruiting on campus; Infosys hires almost half of its new graduates off campus.

According to Govil, the company's enhanced margins are a result of operational improvements and the market and demand conditions that drove the personnel decrease.

Long-term, Govil predicts that there may be a growing gap in terms of personnel as AI takes center stage and the business expands into more IP-based platforms.

"But we still need to look at our entire portfolio, an enormous amount of work which we do with our clients, So it's a combination between the two (demand and tech changes) as we move forward, and we anticipate it will evolve over a period of time," he said.