Amidst ‘robust’ layoff rumours nine IT companies in India make it to LinkedIn’s Top Companies 2017 list

Key Highlights

• Nine out of 25 Top companies on the list of where Indians were hunting for jobs.
• Cognizant was at 21st position despite rumours of layoffs reaching 6,000.
• Startup companies too dominated the list of ‘Top companies’ Indians want to work for.

When so many IT professionals live in fear of being shown the door in appraisal month, LinkedIn’s data showed that nearly half the ‘Top companies’ where Indians looked for jobs were of the Information Technology sector.

Nine out of the total 25 list of ‘Top Companies’ where Indians want to work were IT and software companies, the employment oriented social networking platform’s data revealed on Thursday.

Though the top companies have denied an unusual increase in the layoffs of employees; Wipro was reported by PTI to let go of 600 employees based on appraisals.

A lay off threat of nearly 6,000 employees was lying over the heads of IT professionals at Cognizant. This company ranked 21st on the ‘Top Companies’ list.

Infosys, led by CEO Vishal Sikkha, had released 8,000-9,000 employees in the past year due to automation of software.

Job cuts in IT sector are anticipated to go up to 2 lakh annually even at big ticket companies. The number of layoffs is said to be twice that of last year.

Also Read: IT Job Market: Nearly 2 lakh jobs at stake at Infosys, Cognizant, others

Adobe Computer Software company ranked seventh while Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company was brought down from 4th place to 8th place.

Accenture at 12, Tech Mahindra at 14, Cisco Computer Networking at 16, Wipro at 18, Cognizant at 21 and Oracle at 25th position on the list.   

Source: LinkedIn data report.

“The Top Companies list is based on the billions of actions taken by LinkedIn's 500+ million members. Our data team, working with our global editorial team, analyzed those actions to come up with a blended score ranking the winners in each country,” LinkedIn said.

The list ranked startups as the top companies that Indians were looking at for job prospects including the likes of Flipkart and Amazon that took first and second place on the list.

IT companies were still big employers in terms of volume and still remain aspirational, Economic Times quoted Irfan Abdulla, Learning and Talent Solutions Director at LinkedIn.

“Our methodology takes into consideration three main pillars to uncover the companies our members are most interested in now: job applications, both views and applies on postings; engagement, with employees as well as with the company directly; and retention, how many employees are sticking around for a year or longer,” LinkedIn said.