HR Firms prone to hold back onboarding freshers for coming 3 months

Human resource firms for startups and IT services organizations notice a change in the trend where companies,  in general, are withdrawing public invites

A few startups and technology services organizations have put job enrollment on hold for a while, as businesses take a downturn due to the indefinite lockdown to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.\

Nevertheless, some high technology services providers have not changed their current hiring strategies, but job offers for fresh employees are likely to be set back by a few months, analysts said.

Although, startups are revising growth plans and as a result, hiring is on hold.

“Almost 50% of ongoing interviews, new requirements, onboardings have stopped for the last two weeks now, especially in the IT sector,” said Kamal Karanth – co-founder – Xpheno – a Specialist Staffing Solutions company offering IT Staffing, Engineering Services, Sales Staffing, and Direct Hire.

He also said that these signals at approximately 50% drop fresh hiring in the next quarter.

Human resource firms for startups and IT services organizations notice a change in the  trend where companies, in general, are withdrawing public invites.

“We have already started seeing startups and SMBs withdraw their offers and put on hold fresh candidate hiring,” said Shweta Harikrishnan, Human Resource director of HackerEarth, a firm that links companies with software developers.
She went on to say that companies that recruit big are “strictly looking at filling some key vacant positions but no new roles.”

HR executives say that the process is being accomplished through distant recruiting, which includes online tests and interviews. This could likely affect the recruiting process in the future.

Kamal Karanth posits that virtual interviews and recruitments are going to be postponed indefinitely due to the current global lockdown.

Infosys, an Indian Multinational IT company, is known to have held video interviews.
Although, the company did not let disclose specific numbers related to recruiting or its effect due to the global pandemic.

Co-founder of Teamlease, Rituparna Chakraborty said, “Had there been no impact of the virus outbreak, we would have seen a clear upswing in fresh jobs in the market. More so, our clients conducted interviews till Tuesday morning, but most happened virtually.”

People in the industry are concerned that mid-sized and large companies are prolonging job offers.

Chakraborty said, “We do not know what is going to happen on those offers now.” She also added that some IT firms have put an end to interviews.

In-depth questions sent by ET were ignored by top rank technology organizations like TCS, Wipro and HCL Technologies.

Ashutosh Dabral, CEO and Co-Founder of Hush commented by saying, “Over the last two weeks, we have seen that a lot of startup employees were discussing if they were given work-from-home, but in the last 4-5 days, hiring and layoff conversations have begun.”

He continued saying that many companies had called off interviews without reason.

“A lot of discussions are now also happening around layoffs and many are worried that it is bound to happen in the coming months, while a few firms have already started,” says Dabral.

Reports from ET show that a few startups like Bounce and Drivezy had begun cutting off staff.

Meanwhile, startups are considering cutting costs anticipating a funding crunch amidst the global pandemic and economic recession.