IT services giant Wipro announced plans to hire 10,000-12,000 fresh graduates from campuses in the financial year 2025-26 on Friday. “There could be a quarter changes, but between 10,000-12,000 freshers would be onboarded every fiscal,” Wipro's Chief Human Resources Officer Saurabh Govil told the Press after declaring Q3FY25 results.
He also mentioned that campus hiring for the current fiscal year is expected to reach around 10,000, with approximately 7,000 already hired by Q3, and an additional 2,500-3,000 planned for the next quarter.
In a similar move, Wipro's competitor Infosys announced on Thursday that it plans to hire over 20,000 freshers in FY26, signaling a recovery in demand and a revival of discretionary spending across various sectors.
“We don't want to go overboard and make offers that we can't absorb. So we have learned the lesson. We want to go more cautious, but more consistent. That's our approach," Govil added.
The move comes as the Bengaluru-based company re-evaluates its lateral and campus hiring strategies to focus on improving employee utilization rates, reducing attrition, and enhancing margins.
Govil said that the company will continue to onboard 2,500-3,000 freshers each quarter.
He also noted that Wipro has honoured all pending offers and resumed regular campus hiring after a "stop-start" approach over the past two years. Additionally, the company is leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) for L1 (fresher-level) hiring, with human support playing a role. "This represents a major shift in our hiring strategy," Govil said.
When questioned about the decision to revoke fresher offers to 2022 engineering graduates, Govil explained that the move was driven by the significant gap between when the offers were extended and when candidates were onboarded.
This issue was part of a wider trend in the industry, as IT companies delayed onboarding freshers from the 2022 and 2023 engineering batches due to a downturn in discretionary deals, caused by a challenging macroeconomic environment in key markets.
At the time, Wipro offered freshers the option to accept a pay cut for early onboarding. However, those who did not meet internal performance assessments were eventually let go.
Govil further reassured that the company has taken proactive measures to ensure candidates remain industry-ready. "We provided skilling opportunities through online platforms and assessed candidates on technical and communication skills before onboarding them," he explained.
He stressed that the reassessment process was necessary to uphold quality standards and ensure that new hires aligned with the evolving demands of the IT sector. "Given the two-year gap, we didn’t want to onboard individuals who had lost touch. The reassessment ensured we brought in candidates who could meet current requirements," he added.
The company did not disclose the specific ratio of rejections to acceptances.