No job after degree: Indian students struggling to find entry-level jobs as automation takes place

For many Indian students, getting a college degree was supposed to be the first step towards a corporate career. But for a growing number of fresh graduates, the harder part now begins after college: finding that first job. The problem is particularly visible in technology and financial services, where companies are using artificial intelligence to handle tasks that traditionally gave young employees their first experience. Work such as checking documents, processing loans, reconciling accounts, preparing invoices and writing basic code is increasingly being done with AI tools. That is leaving fresh graduates competing for fewer entry-level openings at a time when millions of young Indians enter the workforce every year.Purva Jagtap, a 22-year-old engineering graduate from DY Patil University, is among them. After completing her degree this year, she expected to find a job in India's technology sector. Instead, she is spending her time applying for jobs and competing with thousands of other candidates.“I am worried that AI might reduce the number of entry-level jobs because it can do many things faster,” Jagtap told Bloomberg.The pressure is especially important for India because the country's technology industry employs around 6 million people and contributes nearly 8 percent of the economy. Around 2.4 million of these workers are employed by global capability centres (GCCs), Bloomberg reported, quoting the National Association of Software and Services Companies and the Zinnov-Nasscom India GCC Landscape report of 2026. These centres, operated by global companies including major banks, have become important sources of technology and business jobs in cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune. However, even GCCs are becoming more selective about entry-level recruitment as their work becomes more specialised.TCS, Infosys hiring slows as AI changes IT jobsThe impact is more pronounced across India's large IT services industry, which includes Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys. McKinsey Global Institute estimates that around 30% of job hours in India could be automated by 2030. The change is already affecting hiring patterns. Infosys terminated the contracts of hundreds of trainees last year, while TCS announced plans to cut 12,000 jobs worldwide, mostly in India. Hiring at large IT firms has also become much slower. According to an ING research note citing news reports, the major IT companies added only 17 net employees during the first nine months of the current financial year. This is a significant change for an industry that traditionally relied heavily on campus recruitment to bring thousands of young graduates into the workforce.“The large IT services companies used to traditionally go to campuses and hire lots of young, fresh graduates,” Hitesh Oberoi, chief executive of Info Edge, which owns Naukri.com, told Bloomberg. "That hiring has slowed down considerably.”The challenge is not limited to technology jobs. GCCs are also hiring fewer people for some routine positions in areas such as sales, finance, marketing and customer support. A Quess Corp report found that some supply chain and procurement roles declined by around 42 percent in 2025 as companies moved towards AI-based analytics and business decision-making.Companies want AI skills, but freshers need experience to get startedFor students, this creates a difficult cycle. Companies increasingly want candidates who understand AI, cloud computing, cybersecurity or machine learning, as well as the business problems these technologies are meant to solve. But fresh graduates often need their first job to gain that experience in the first place.Financial-services GCCs are now looking for employees who can work across technology and business functions. Knowing how to write code is no longer enough in many roles. Candidates may also need to understand how an AI system works, what assumptions it makes and when a human employee needs to step in.At the same time, companies are finding that AI can allow much smaller teams to complete work that once required dozens of engineers. Lalit Ahuja, CEO of GCC services firm ANSR, said one technology programme that previously needed about 50 engineers over a year can now be completed by four to 10 people in roughly four weeks with AI. That does not necessarily mean mass unemployment across GCCs. Instead, companies are hiring more selectively for specialised roles while asking existing employees to learn new skills.Citigroup, for instance, has hired around 2,000 people net in India so far this year for its GCC operations, compared with about 4,000 last year. It has also taken in 500 apprentices from Indian educational institutions.- Ends