(This story originally appeared in on Nov 02, 2017)

The $156-billion Indian IT industry, often called the biggest job creator in the organised sector, is seeing a tectonic shift in recruitment.For the first six months of the fiscal, Cognizant, Infosys , Wipro and Tech Mahindra have all seen their employee strength actually decline -quite sharply in Cognizant's case (by over 5,000). TCS and HCL Technologies are the only exceptions among India's top six IT companies , but even TCS' addition is a fraction of what it did in the first six months of the previous fiscal.The headcount of all of the six companies put together dropped by 4,157 in the first six months of this fiscal, compared to an increase of almost 60,000 in the same period last year.“The industry is standing at a crossroads. The journey toward digitisation and automation provides a plethora of opportunities, but with the same token also a myriad of challenges. Hiring for some of the Indian majors has not only decelerated, but for the first time we have seen a decrease of headcount,“ Tom Reuner, SVP of intelligent automation and IT services at IT consulting firm HfS Research, said.Several factors are at work. Automation is making thousands of entry-level jobs redundant. Companies are improving their employee-utilisation levels, and keeping fewer people on the bench. In the traditional spaces of application development & maintenance, and infrastructure maintenance, growth is down.And while companies are looking to hire people with specialised skill sets in newer areas such as data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence and internet of-things, the growth rate in these spaces and the nature of the business do not necessitate large-scale hiring. Peter Bendor Samuel of outsourcing research firm Everest Group told TOI, “The employment picture in Indian IT is changing rapidly.The intake of new campus hires in the Indian IT industry is dramatically down and looks to continue to fall. The industry will continue to be a great place for engineers with the right skills in AI, automation, and other digital skills that are in high demand. However, for those individuals who have traditional IT skills, the picture changes dramatically.“Following Infosys' second quarter results, CFO M D Ranganath said the decline in headcount was because of higher utilisation and productivity improvements.Wipro president and chief human resources officer Saurabh Govil said last month the industry has moved away from headcountlinked growth. “We have improved our utilisation. We are focusing on re-training our existing people,“ he said.Industry body Nasscom had projected that the industry would add 1.3-1.5 lakh jobs in the current fiscal. Looks like that can at best be a gross hiring figure. Excluding those who voluntarily exit the industry or are asked to go, it appears that if there is some overall increase in headcount in the industry , it will be quite modest.