According to reports, Information technology (IT) services major Wipro, on January 17 will onboard 10,000-12,000 freshers from campuses in the financial year 2025-26.

“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 says.

"Campus hiring for the current fiscal would be about 10,000. We've done approximately 7,000 (till Q3). And we're looking at 2,500-3,000 next quarter,” Saurabh adds.

Wipro’s cross-town rival Infosys, on January 16, said that the IT services major will hire over 20,000 freshers in FY26, signaling demand recovery and revival of discretionary spending in several sectors.

Saurabh says, “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.”

The development comes as the Bengaluru-based company is reassessing its lateral and campus hiring models to focus on improving employee utilization rates and lowering attrition to grow margins. The Bengaluru-headquartered company will continue onboarding 2,500-3,000 freshers every quarter.

“The company has honored all pending offers and resumed regular campus hiring after a ‘stop-start’ approach in the past two years. Wipro is also using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to conduct L1 (fresher-level) hiring, which humans partly aid. This marks a significant shift in our hiring approach," adds Saurabh.

The company’s move was necessitated by the time gap between extending offers and onboarding candidates.

In industry-wide phenomena, IT companies delayed onboarding freshers of 2022 and 2023 engineering graduates after a weak macroeconomic situation in key markets led to a slump in discretionary deals.

Back then, the company gave freshers the option of taking a pay cut to be onboarded early, and later freshers were terminated on failing internal performance assessments.

“The company has taken steps to ensure that candidates remain industry-ready. We provided skilling opportunities through online platforms and assessed candidates on technical and communication skills before onboarding them,” adds Saurabh.