Shrinking Fresher Hiring Could Close IT's Golden Pathway for Tier-2, Tier-3 Youth: FITE Maharashtra President

The hiring situation in the IT sector today varies sharply across experience levels. At the entry level, the slowdown has been particularly severe. Earlier, large IT companies hired freshers in huge numbers every year, especially from top colleges, which created a ripple effect across the market by opening up opportunities in mid-sized firms for students from other institutions. That pipeline has now weakened significantly. 

Many big IT firms have frozen or reduced fresher hiring, delayed joining dates by six to ten months, and cut campus intake, leaving thousands of graduates from the 2023, 2024, and 2025 batches still waiting for jobs. 

As students from top colleges also begin competing for roles in smaller and mid-sized companies, the pressure in the market has intensified, making many desperate job seekers vulnerable to scams such as fake consultancies, pay-for-job schemes, and fake experience rackets.

For mid-level and lateral employees, the picture is more mixed. Professionals with expertise in cutting-edge technologies such as AI, cloud, and specialised technical skills are still finding opportunities and, in some cases, commanding attractive offers. However, those working in conventional or legacy technologies are facing reduced hiring, long joining delays, background verification uncertainties, project allocation issues, and mobility constraints such as 90-day notice periods. This has made lateral movement much harder than before.

A major reason for this shift appears to be the overhiring that took place during the COVID years, when companies aggressively expanded on the assumption that digital demand would continue to surge. Many projects were planned around that expectation, but after the pandemic, some of those projections did not materialise as online demand in several sectors stabilised or declined. As projects slowed or disappeared, fresher hiring was hit first, and the impact has since spread across other segments of the IT workforce.

Every major organization is training its workforce on AI. Even when employees are not currently using AI in client projects, they feel they are at risk if they do not learn or understand it. As a result, there is a constant pressure to keep learning and find ways to apply AI in their work. The bigger anxiety today is not just layoffs, but the fear of becoming irrelevant if they fail to adapt to AI-driven changes.

If hiring for entry-level roles shrinks significantly, many young people from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities could lose what has traditionally been their golden pathway into the technology sector. Aspirations around high salaries, overseas assignments, higher education, and upward social mobility may become much harder to achieve. For many families, the dream of making it big through the IT industry could remain unfulfilled.

AI-led job losses and the stress associated with job insecurity could certainly become a political issue if governments do not intervene with fair policies to protect employees. There is growing concern that some companies may use AI as a justification for aggressive hiring and firing practices. The issue has already been raised in Parliament and state assemblies, indicating that it is increasingly entering public policy and political discourse.

It is difficult to accurately predict the pace of AI adoption and its long-term impact because the technology is evolving rapidly. Even companies are still trying to understand future demand and workforce requirements. However, there is a perception that some firms may be using AI-driven productivity gains as a cushion to absorb or justify workforce reductions and changes in hiring plans.

We recently dealt with what appears to be one of the most serious job scam cases involving freshers in Pune. In this case, a company allegedly recruited over a thousand fresh graduates and made them pay anywhere between ₹1.5 lakh and ₹4 lakh in exchange for offer letters promising salary packages. Many of these candidates believed they had successfully cleared the interview process and that this payment was merely the final step to secure employment.

As complaints began to surface, we started organising affected candidates by creating WhatsApp groups, conducting video calls, and using Google Forms to systematically document their cases. We then coordinated with the police and labour authorities to escalate the matter. The number of complaints eventually crossed 1,000, with around 600 formal complaints being filed, following which action was taken.

What was even more alarming was that once this case became public, freshers from other companies came forward with strikingly similar stories. The pattern was almost identical; candidates were put through fake interviews, asked to pay money, placed into so-called internal training programmes or fake projects, denied salaries, and eventually terminated.

This points to a much larger and deeply troubling issue, particularly affecting freshers from smaller cities and tier-2 and tier-3 colleges, who are often more vulnerable because of limited opportunities and growing desperation in a weak job market.

For employees with 15–20 years of experience, the challenge is very different from that faced by freshers. Over the course of their careers, many professionals moved into roles such as project management, PMO, quality assurance, client-facing delivery, and coordination functions not because they lacked technical ability, but because companies themselves created these roles and encouraged people to transition into them as business needs evolved.

Now, with changing technology priorities and cost pressures, some of these same employees are being told they are ‘not technical enough’ or no longer fit the company’s future requirements. This raises a fundamental question of fairness: if an organisation guided an employee into a non-core technical role over 15 years, can it suddenly hold that career path against them without first providing a structured opportunity to reskill and transition?

Upskilling is important in any evolving industry, but it cannot become a justification for abrupt layoffs or a way to shift responsibility entirely onto employees. Companies also have a duty to create structured reskilling pathways, transition support, and fair workforce planning for experienced professionals who have spent years building the organisation.

At present, AI is largely creating value for clients and customers by helping businesses grow and reduce costs. However, once these productivity gains mature, organizations may increasingly look at workforce reductions as a way to achieve additional savings.

Government policy should focus on reskilling employees rather than allowing technology-driven job displacement. Technology has continuously evolved from automation to full-stack development and now AI and workers should be given opportunities to upgrade their skills instead of losing their jobs.

The government should also expand investment in its own digital and IT infrastructure, creating new employment opportunities. Digital India should go beyond internet connectivity, mobile access, UPI payments, and online services to include broader technology development and infrastructure projects.

In addition, tech workers should receive stronger protections against layoffs, including meaningful compensation packages. Job terminations should carry sufficient financial responsibility so that layoffs are not treated as an easy cost-cutting measure by companies.