BENGALURU: Recruitment by IT services industry, which accounted for nearly a quarter of the organised private sector employment in India in fiscal 2014, will halve by fiscal 2018 despite a 13-15% growth forecast in the industry’s revenues during this period, according to credit rating agency CRISIL.The shift can be seen already. Between April 2013 and March 2014, the IT industry added only 13,000 employees for every billion dollar of revenue, according to data from software industry grouping Nasscom. During the year to March 2013, it needed 26,500 employees.IT services vendors are struggling to crank up profitability in a milieu where global weakness is forcing their clients to optimise costs to hold on to margins. On their part, vendors responded by rationalising their bench strength, improving utilisation rate and trimming operational costs, according to CRISIL.Among the top IT services providers , HCL Technologies is so far proving to be the most efficient when it comes to revenue productivity.In 2012-13, it employed 18,270 staff for every billion dollar in revenue. Infosys required 21,202 employees, Wipro 23,480 and TCS 23,810 for every $1 billion in the top line.Since the end of 2007, India's largest standalone BPO, Genpact, has reduced the number of employees needed to earn $1 billion in revenue by over 10,000 to 29,577.According to a CRISIL report, despite revenue growth, companies will run very tight ships because of which incremental employment will be curbed. Vendors are gradually adopting just-in-time hiring and increasing the proportion of fixed-price contracts in their portfolio, which reduces the need to maintain flab on the bench, the report said. Additionally, they are migrating towards higher-value service offerings such as consulting, investing in intellectual property (IP)-based products and leveraging on the emergence of social media, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC).“These initiatives will increase revenue per employee (RPE) at a compounded annual growth rate of 7% between fiscals 2015 and 2018. This, along with improvement in employee utilisation, will over time delink hiring from revenue growth. We also foresee a transformation in the recruitment pattern where employers become more focused and picky, increasingly seeking specific skill sets. This will lead to greater lateral hiring,” said Ramraj Pai, President, Business Head –Ratings, Large Corporates, CRISIL.India’s IT sector, with revenues of $118 billion in the last fiscal, employs 3.1 million people, or around 24% of organised private-sector employment in India. The sector has practically driven growth in organised private jobs in the country over the past decade. Its initial phase of high revenue growth between fiscals 2003 and 2007 also saw a substantial growth in recruitments.This was followed by the global financial crisis between 2008 and 2010 and moderate recovery during fiscals 2011 and 2013. Yet hiring rates mirrored revenue growth. CRISIL believes the sector is now entering a new phase where this will gradually delink.“We believe despite healthy revenue growth of 13-15% for IT services foreseen in the medium term --aided by recovery in discretionary spending by clients -- job additions will gradually shrink by about 50% to 55,000 by fiscal 2018 from 105,000 in fiscal 2014, as companies opt for more-focused, higher-value initiatives,” said Anuj Sethi, Director-Ratings, CRISIL. This process has already been set in motion, as evidenced in the reduction in employee costs from 69% of total costs in fiscal 2013 to 64% in the last fiscal.