India's third largest IT firm Wipro has started recruiting non-science graduates for technology jobs, marking a change in trend in the sector where the companies traditionally hire engineering, computer science and science graduates.
The Bengaluru-based company now wants to hire candidates from commerce, fine arts and business management streams and place them in areas like infrastructure management services and application support and services after training, the Business Standard reported.
"Presently, they (non-science graduate recruits) are in small numbers but doing very well," said Saurabh Govil, global human resource head, Wipro.
"It's not that we are trying to force-fit engineers everywhere. We are trying to hire bright young people and grooming them for various roles after proper training," he said.
Wipro had started hiring science graduates many years back and the company now fetches multiple benefits by doing so. One of the main ideas behind hiring science graduates is that the salary packages offered to them are lower compared to campus hires from engineering colleges. Another advantage of hiring them is to keep attrition levels under check.
Therefore, allowing non-science graduates to take tech jobs is deemed as another positive step "in this direction".
"In all likelihood, we will see a broad shift in skill sets. On the one hand, accelerating intelligent automation will make many back-office jobs obsolete. The jury is still out on whether this will lead to re-skilling, re-badging or redundancies," said Thomas Reuner, managing director for IT Outsourcing Research at HfS Research.
"On the other hand, the journey toward the as-a-service economy necessitates new skills, including design thinking, automation governance and highly specialised data analysis. In this new model, business skills will be as important as technical skills," he added.
Wipro currently has a tie-up with Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani to offer training to science graduates to make them "industry-ready".
"The idea of having non-science graduates to manage IT business is not to contain costs but have talent layers to manage various spectrums," Govil said.
