BENGALURU|PUNE: Mid-tier IT companies like Mindtree, Zensar, Hexaware amongst others are looking to hire about 500-1,000 freshers in the upcoming recruitment drive for FY19.“Hiring at the fresher level is picking up quite aggressively, but not at the volumes and numbers of earlier days. Currently, hiring is back at 60-70% of the 2014-15 levels,” said Pankaj Khanna, vice-president of talent acquisition at Mindtree.The Indian IT industry is expected to grow at a steady 7-9% in FY19, in contrast to the original 10-12% Nasscom guided in FY17. Though net addition has increased, the rate of job creation has dropped over the years. The industry body estimates that total addition to the IT workforce in FY 2018 was a little over 100,000.The $167 billion IT-BPM industry employs close to 400,000 people and is currently faced with disruption due to the shift towards automation and new digital technologies.Large firms who have invested in retaining thousands of existing employees have surplus staff in their teams deterring them to be aggressive in campus placements. The small and mid-size firm are more nibble and have found it easier to shift gears to digital.Mindtree hired 1,285 campus graduates in FY18. “This year also the numbers would be higher. But not just us, every recruiter has become more selective and looking for specific skills in freshers,” Khanna said.Nasscom jobs and skills report of 2017 pegs that 33-35% of the workforce in mid-size IT firms have been trained for digital skills. The percentage of digitally trained workforce for small size firms stood at 38%.“We are looking at a substantial increase in campus hiring this year and have already hired 500 people,” said R Srikrishna, chief executive of Mumbai-based Hexaware Technologies.On an average, all mid-size companies have about 40% of their revenue coming from digital and its growing faster than the legacy business.“Most midcaps have a strategic focus on certain specific verticals that they are good at. For these firms, legacy business is 50% or less and digital is about 40% and growing at about 30-40%,” said Amit Chandra, IT analyst at HDFC Securities. This is reflective of their interest in hiring freshers with digital skills. “Gone are the days when students can get recruited for differentiating between computer chips and potato chips,” said Dr Savitha Rani, head, training and placement at Ramaiah Institute of Technology.The placement head said IT companies are looking for students with certification in artificial intelligence, cloud, analytics, machine learning and other digital courses.With net addition of 1,000 employees last year, Pune-headquartered Zensar said they too are looking for ‘digital skills’. “We hired 1,000 people off-campus last year and the number will be moderately higher this year,” said Sandeep Kishore, CEO, Zensar.“For new skill areas, most companies have optimised their utilisation rate. They will continue to further enhance their utilisation level,” said Sangeeta Gupta, VP at Nasscom.A July 2017 Nasscom report noted that bench duration for IT-BPM employees was down 18%, and there was a five percent increase in resource utilisation by companies. The sort of linearity that existed, where more legacy deals meant more jobs does not apply to the digital business. Decoupling revenues and headcounts has lead to productivity gains for services companies. “They (mid-tier) companies are not necessarily going to take a strategy of a 2012-13 time period where a single mid-tier company would make about 1,000 plus offers,” Gupta said. “You are doing platform-based digital solutions. So if I’m growing at 20%, I’m not going to hire 20% more.”Colleges too are cognizant of the shift ahead of recruitments in September. “I had a couple of meetings with companies and there is a lot of emphasis on niche skills,” Dr Rani said.