HCL Tech’s net hiring more than halved with the tech behemoth witnessing a net addition of 2,945 employees in the October to December 2022 period, down from 8,359 in the previous quarter of the 2022-2023 fiscal, according to quarterly financial results announced on Thursday.

However, the IT firm hired a total of 5,892 freshers during the three month period, which takes its total headcount at the end of December 2022 ended quarter to 222,270. In a presser after the results, the company said fresher hiring up 22,000 in the first nine months of the fiscal. However, it may just fall short of the 30,000 due to higher retention rates.

The firm also noted talent demand is around cloud migration and cloud adoption.

HCL Tech’s attrition rate, the gradual reduction of workforce by employees leaving and not being replaced — rather than by redundancy, eased to 21.7 percent in the third quarter of the fiscal year after remaining constant at 23.8 percent in the first half of the financial year.

Amid an overall hiring slowdown in the IT sector, HCL Tech's peer Infosys too witnessed a significant drop in hiring while TCS saw a net reduction in its total headcount during the quarter.

Also Read: Infosys hiring hits a 9-quarter low but attrition rate eases to 24.3% in Q3

Though people metrics remained tensed, HCL Tech reported a net profit of Rs 4,096 crore during the quarter, which was higher than the CNBC-TV18 poll estimate of Rs 3,858 crore.

It also became the third IT company to report a beat on revenue. The company reported a US Dollar revenue growth of 5.3 percent on a sequential basis, compared to an estimate of 3.5 percent. In constant currency terms, it recorded a revenue growth of 5 percent quarter-on-quarter, well above Infosys' 2.4 percent and TCS' 2.2 percent.

Also Read: HCL Tech Q3 Results | Highest EBIT margin in six quarters beats estimate, guidance band narrowed

Also Read: TCS loses 2,197 employees and attrition remains above 21% in third quarter