'Hiring within IT services firms is going to be very specialised.'
India's top information technology services companies are getting more selective in entry-level hirings as the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence raises demand for professionals with specialised skills.
IT services firms are cutting back on mass recruitment from engineering colleges and are instead, stepping up hiring of fresh graduates with specialised skills in AI as well as cybersecurity, cloud computing and data engineering at significantly higher salaries.
According to data from HirePro, an AI-powered recruitment automation firm, differential salary for specialised skills among campus recruits now accounts for around 30 to 40 per cent of the overall campus hiring.
This is expected to go up to 45 to 55 per cent in 2026-2027 (FY27).
Key Points
- Leading IT services firms are reducing mass campus hiring while increasing recruitment of graduates with specialised AI and digital technology skills.
- Differential salary hiring already accounts for up to 40 per cent of campus recruitment and is expected to rise further.
- TCS and HCLTech are prioritising premium hiring categories, offering significantly higher salaries for AI-ready engineering graduates.
- Generative AI is automating routine entry-level work, increasing demand for professionals with practical AI, cloud and cybersecurity expertise.
- A widening AI talent shortage is creating wage premiums as companies compete for graduates capable of delivering AI-led client projects immediately.
AI Skills Drive Hiring
"IT services hiring starts from August-September.
"But it is safe to assume that hiring within IT services firms is going to be very specialised. And this specialised hiring numbers continue to grow in most of the IT services organisations," said S Pasupathi, COO, HirePro.
India's largest IT services player Tata Consultancy Services, which is also one of the largest campus recruiters of graduates, has seen this segment going up in recent years.
Specialised hiring for TCS has been going up, said Chief Human Resources Officer Sudeep Kunnumal.
This even as the overall campus hiring numbers for TCS has come down.
TCS intends to hire 25,000 professionals from campuses in FY27.
TCS Campus Recruitment
"Our hiring in the differential salary category has been going up. Last year, this was 40 per cent. We will again raise it this time, as we look at the top segment. We will hire more in the Prime and Digital category," TCS CHRO Kunnumal told Business Standard in an interaction after the firm's first quarter FY27 results.
TCS has three categories in the differential salary segment: Ninja (Rs 3.36 lakh per annum (LPA) and above), Digital (Rs 7 lakh LPA) and Prime (Rs 10 LPA).
HCLTech Bets on Specialists
Similarly, HCLTech said after its Q1FY27 results that it will focus more on hiring engineering graduates who are armed with niche skills and will pay them substantially more, almost three to four times, than traditional engineers.
"In the previous two quarters," Ram Sundararajan, chief people officer, HCLTech said, "I have been talking about the focus on freshers being hired more around specialisation, not necessarily about the numbers."
"If I have to compromise on numbers and if that results in increasing the percentage of elite engineers that we will hire, that will be our focus.
"These elite engineers, over the next two to three years, should become part of the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) cohort."
FDEs are engineers who work directly with enterprise customers to deploy, customise, and integrate AI solutions into real business workflows.
Differentiated salary is not a new strategy; it started in 2018-2019 as companies were gearing up for the cloud and digital requirements, said Pasupathi of HirePro.
Then this was called as 'digital talent'.
When it started, companies which were giving a salary of Rs 3 lakh-Rs 3.4 lakh-Rs 3.8 lakh LPA, started giving a package of Rs 6 LPA, he added.
Now companies have created further slabs and also moved salaries to as high as Rs 15 lakh to Rs 16 LPA for certain skill sets, Pasupathi said.
GenAI Changes Entry Jobs
The shift is being driven by two factors.
First, GenAI is automating much of the entry-level work such as boilerplate coding, basic testing, documentation, and routine support that freshers traditionally started with.
Second, enterprise clients now expect AI-native delivery from day one, making job-ready AI skills far more valuable than generic programming knowledge.
Neeti Sharma, CEO, TeamLease Digital, an HR services firm, shares that instead of broad software engineering talent, hiring is increasingly narrowing towards AI-adjacent skills such as prompt design, workflow automation, AI-output quality assessment (QA), model evaluation, and building basic AI agents or copilots.
At the same time, companies are also creating new roles such as FDEs, said Sharma.
AI Talent Wage Premium
"This is also creating wage premium.
"The premium is not because engineering talent is scarce -- it is because applied AI exposure is.
"India's AI talent demand is estimated at 6 lakh to 6.5 lakh professionals, against an available talent pool of around 4.2 lakh, leaving a skills gap of over 50 per cent," said Sharma.
As a result, says Sharma, IT services firms are willing to pay more for freshers who can contribute immediately to AI-led client engagements rather than spending months on reskilling after hiring.
Aditya Narayan Mishra, managing director and CEO, Ciel HR added that AI is not creating a conventional hiring boom.
"Organisations are recruiting fewer people for generic roles while investing more deeply in specialised skills that directly influence productivity, customer outcomes and business transformation.
"Some of the key roles for which the IT companies are hiring include agentic AI engineers, FDE, GenAI solution architects, and AI product owners," he said.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff
