Fresh hiring at Wipro only after demand picks up

Wipro Technologies, the country’s third largest IT services exporter, has decided not to hire fresh recruits till demand picks up. Pratik Kumar, executive VP (human resources), Wipro admitted that there were delays in bringing on board campus recruits for the next fiscal.

“None of the IT services firms is hiring and Wipro is not an exception. We will not be hiring till demand picks up. While we will honour all offers that we have made to campus recruits in 2008-09, there can be some delay in bringing them on board,” he said. The global economic slowdown has forced most IT services firms to go slow on hiring.

Wipro has issued about 8,000 offer letters to campus recruits in 2008-09. Generally, these recruits will be absorbed by the firm in 2009-10. “We may not be able to bring all of them on board in FY10. But we are in constant communication with them on when they can join the firm. Besides, we are looking at providing some avenues to keep them occupied,” he said.

Wipro Technologies has taken up a slew of measures to cut cost. “We have adopted about 30 measures to cut cost and most of them are related to increasing operational efficiency. We believe that we can improve our utilisation levels by a couple of points,” he said.

The utilisation rate at Wipro’s global IT business has been steadily rising and at the end of the third quarter, stood at 79.4%. In the third quarter of current fiscal (FY09), Wipro recorded consolidated revenue of Rs 6,634.3 crore, while the firm’s IT services business revenue were at Rs 5,079 crore. The firm, however, is still high on training students and faculties and skill upgradation. Wipro’s not for profit trust Mission 10X has partnered with Hyderabad-based Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) for conducting faculty enablement programmes.

They will collaborate in developing curriculum, organising workshops and undertaking joint research in creation of educational assets.

“Currently, the programme covers 3,000 faculties in the country. In two years we plan to scale it up to cover 10,000 faculties,” said Pratik Kumar.