IT sector to hire 1.20 lakh this year: Experts

New Delhi, July 28: The country's IT & ITeS industry would generate as many as 1.20 lakh jobs this year even as campus hiring is likely to remain subdued, experts say.

While there has been a drop in campus hiring in IT sector as the industry reels under a economic downturn in the West, jobs added this year will see large hiring from the market.

"Last year, the campus hiring numbers had dipped from the normal and this year, it is not going to be any different. We estimate that there will be around 1,20,000 jobs created this year," talent assessment company Merit Trac Head of Innovation and Corporate Business Rajeev Menon said.

The IT sector is set to grow by 12 to 14 per cent this year, as per Nasscom estimates.

Over the years, large IT companies have relied on campus hiring for large scale recruitment. However, since 2008, these companies have been trying hard to adjust to changing economic and business landscape and campus hiring has been impacted.

Last year, around 1.8 lakh graduates were placed in the IT sector. The number, however, is expected to be 30 per cent less this year.

The changing economic scenario is the most compelling reason why hiring from campuses are reducing and these are causing inconsistencies in the business demand which is reflecting in hiring particularly at the entry level.

Commenting on the trends, executive search firm GlobalHunt MD Sunil Goel said: "Expectations from the campuses also have gone down as experienced resources are easily available at the similar price. So, the companies are preferring to hire from the market than going to campuses with larger reasons to drop in campus hiring."

Campus hiring has been under stress amid rising number of candidates seeking employment. For example, in 2005 there were 365,000 graduates in IT sector but the same stands at around 1.3 million graduates in 2012.

Some of the service domains within IT like e-commerce, social media, mobile banking are showing consistent growth.

The India IT-ITES sector faced strong headwinds in 2012-13 due to global economic slowdown and muted spending in North America and Europe, which accounts for as much as 80 per cent of Indian IT companies' revenues.

PTI