Wipro is returning to campuses. But there’s a catch

After skipping campuses last year, IT services major Wipro Ltd is cranking up its hiring apparatus this year, as it considers scaling up its initial target of taking in 10,000 freshers in FY25, a person close to the development said on condition of anonymity.

“The management is discussing to increase the overall fresher intake to about 22,000. The number is not final yet, but talks are ongoing,” said the person, adding that hiring was being done for the role of project engineer across teams.

However, the hiring is likely to happen only at the lowest tier of the company’s three-tiered hiring structure at starting salaries of ₹3.5 lakh per year, and that too from non-IIT and non-NIT engineering colleges, according to an internal email sent to its employees that Mint has seen.

Wipro resumes campus hiring in a fortnight’s time, the email mentioned.

Starting salaries for employees from the Wipro’s ‘elite’ list of colleges have remained unchanged for at least a decade, the person cited above said.

An email sent to Wipro went unanswered until press time.

Entry-level jobs only

Wipro hires freshers from campuses across three bands. The top category is ‘star’, under which graduates are paid starting salaries of about ₹10.5 lakh a year. This is followed by ‘turbo’, where graduates are paid more than ₹6.5 lakh a year. The lowest tier is ‘elite’, where graduates are paid ₹3.5 lakh a year.

As of now, Wipro is only hiring employees from its ‘elite’ category, according to the email mentioned earlier.

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Mint could not independently ascertain whether the company will hire graduates from the ‘turbo’ and ‘star’ categories later.

As per the email, Wipro will give a letter of intent to those graduates who complete the five rounds of selection, including interviews and skill assessments. The selected graduates will then undergo training specific to the teams they are to be deployed in, by an external training partner for 8-12 weeks. Only upon completion of the training will the graduates be onboarded to Wipro.

No jobs for IITs, NITs

The Bengaluru-headquartered software services company will visit the top 100 engineering colleges, not including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs), for recruiting graduates for the batch graduating in 2025.

There are about 8,000 non-IIT and non-NIT engineering colleges that fall in Wipro's ‘elite’ category. A few prominent names include Bengaluru-based Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Chennai-based SRM Institute of Science and Technology, and Vellore Institute of Technology.

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As much as the company’s profitability is under pressure, Wipro is hiring only at the lowest rung of the pyramid because it believes that retaining engineers from non-elite colleges is easier, the person cited earlier said.

“Turnaround time, that is time the freshers take to make themselves project-deployable, is lesser for engineers from non-IIT, NIT institutions as compared with those from premier institutes,” said the person.

Hiring back on the agenda

"Hiring by IT services companies is expected to increase for the 2025 batch compared with the last two years,” said Savitha Rani M., training and placement officer, Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bengaluru.

Rani added that in the OpenAI era, the landscape of placements is rapidly evolving, driven by advancements in AI and automation.

India’s largest IT services companies have shown that they will resume hiring from campuses after a year of slow demand forced them to cull headcount and freeze their hiring plans.

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Infosys Ltd is expected to hire up to 20,000 freshers this year whereas India’s largest IT services company, Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), is expected to hire 40,000 graduates, according to according to the companies’ commentary after they announced their first quarter earnings in July.

Chatter on hiring in IT services companies has been gaining steam after reports emerged of Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. offering salaries of ₹2.5 lakh per annum to freshers. Cognizant issued a clarification through a press release.

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“Our recent job posting for talent from non-engineering backgrounds, with a 3-year undergraduate degree has been grossly misrepresented. This job posting, with compensation of INR 2.52 Lakhs annually was only for candidates with a 3-year undergraduate degree and not for engineering graduates,” said Surya Gummadi, EVP and president, Cognizant Americas, in a statement dated 18 August.

Wipro, which saw a change of leadership at the top when Srini Pallia took over as the company’s chief executive officer on 6 April, saw its full-year revenue decline 2.2% on a yearly basis to $10.8 billion for the year ended March 2024.