Executive search firms and recruitment services companies said they are already seeing an uptick in queries and resumes from employees of Tata Consultancy Services, India’s IT services market leader that on Sunday announced a mass layoff.
Executives at companies like Transearch, CIEL HR and Michael Page told ET that they have been getting queries even before Sunday’s announcement, as many were expecting an imminent job cut.
TCS said it would lay off 2% of its workforce, or more than 12,000 employees, in the middle and senior levels in fiscal 2026. While the company did not provide details, experts expect the actual job losses to be more than the numbers announced.
Puneet Malhotra, senior partner at Transearch India, said he has been getting CVs of senior TCS executives for the last two quarters. And he experts more to follow with the company now formally announcing the job reduction.
“We are already engaged in searches for a few of the senior executives at TCS,” Malhotra said.
The salaries of these executives, with experience of at least 20 years at TCS, are around a crore.
“Historically, greater external activity tends to follow once timelines and scope are clearer; so we expect more traction in the coming weeks,” said TeamLease Digital chief executive Neeti Sharma.
For now, the flow of CVs remains consistent with previous weeks, Sharma said. “This suggests that most are still in the initial phase of transition and are not actively job-hunting. As the process unfolds and more clarity emerges, we may see movement, but it’s too early to draw any trend lines.”
TeamLease has received some resumes from mid- to senior-level IT professionals, including from TCS, she said.
Laid-off TCS employees are likely to find jobs in IT services firms, global capability centres and startups. “Professionals with current expertise in digital transformation, cloud, or AI/ML are likely to find opportunities more easily,” said Sharma.
ET’s queries sent on mail to TCS remained unanswered till the story went to print.
Tech giants are undergoing significant transformations which is leading to restructuring and talent realignment, said Ratna Gupta, senior partner at ABC Consultants.
“The rapidly evolving tech landscape, driven by complex problem-solving needs in areas like AI, cloud computing, cybersecurity, data analytics, IoT, and digital marketing, is poised to transform the employee mix,” Gupta said.
TCS CEO K Krithivasan said that the workforce cut was “not because of artificial intelligence replacing jobs for efficiency gains”.
According to Aditya Mishra, chief executive at CIEL HR, there are more than 7,000 active profiles of TCS executives on the CIEL platform looking for job opportunities. “This is a nearly 25% jump in comparison to what we saw in the entire last month,” he said.
These are mostly senior Salesforce developers, senior Java developers, lead software engineers and data architects, he said.
Experts said that it is going to be challenging to find jobs in the same sector, given the already slow demand for IT services.
“The TCS layoff is recent. However, we have seen a marginal uptick in direct reach outs even earlier,” said Pranshu Upadhyay, regional director at Michael Page India. “It may build out more in the next few days.”