IT hiring in 2025: The boom is real, but not the one engineering students were waiting for
India’s IT job market is growing again in 2025, but the recovery looks different from the one engineering students were expecting. Hiring is rising, yet employers are prioritising experienced professionals, niche digital skills, and immediate readiness over mass campus recruitment. For fresh graduates, the boom exists—but its doors are narrower, and entry requires more than a degree.
India’s IT job market is growing again in 2025, but the recovery looks different from the one engineering students were expecting. (Image: AI generated)
For students enrolled in India’s IT and computer engineering programmes, the last two years have been unsettling. Placements stalled. Offer letters were deferred. Friends with strong degrees sat idle, refreshing inboxes that refused to respond.
The great IT escalator—long assumed to carry every engineering graduate into stable white-collar employment—appeared to have broken down.Now, in 2025, the data says hiring has returned. According to Quess Corp’s report, IT Workforce Trends in India 2025, demand has climbed to 1.8 million technology roles, a 16% rise over 2024 and 31% higher than 2022 levels. On paper, this looks like vindication. The downturn, it seems, is over.Yet for students and fresh graduates, this recovery feels strangely distant.
The jobs are back—but not necessarily for them. The rebound exists, but it is governed by new rules. And those rules reveal a labour market that has quietly grown more selective, more skill-heavy, and less forgiving of inexperience.
The rebound is real but it is not broad-based
The headline figures mask an important truth: The IT market has not returned to mass hiring. It has returned to targeted hiring.
Entry-level hiring, once the symbolic heart of India’s IT success story, has become a narrow channel.
The labour market has reassembled itself around experienced professionals.
People who can step into a role and deliver almost immediately. Entry-level hiring, once the symbolic heart of India’s IT success story, has become a narrow channel.For engineering students, the uncomfortable implication is this: A recovering market does not automatically translate into easier placements.
The centre of gravity has shifted: GCCs now dominate hiring
One of the most consequential shifts highlighted in the Quess report is the growing dominance of Global Capability Centres (GCCs)—the India-based technology and engineering arms of multinational firms.Once peripheral players, GCCs account for about 27% of all IT hiring demand in 2025, up sharply from around 15% in 2024, finds the Quess Corp survey. They are the fastest-growing segment in the ecosystem.According to Quess Corp’s IT Workforce Trends in India 2025 report, traditional IT services and consulting firms are seeing only modest growth of about 7–8 per cent. Hiring in these firms is therefore tight and skill-specific, not the broad-based headcount expansion that once absorbed large batches of engineering graduates.This distinction matters for students because GCCs do not hire at scale from campuses. They hire specialists. Their recruitment logic favours portfolio strength, prior internships, and hands-on exposure—criteria that sharply narrow the funnel for fresh graduates.
