New Delhi, Aug. 27 -- India's 10 largest information technology (IT) services companies are rewriting their hiring playbooks. Instead of the conventional approach of adding tens of thousands of freshers in bulk, they are leaning on their existing bench strength-redeploying engineers into live projects and hiring new recruits only where specific skills or specialisations are needed.

From TCS and Infosys to HCLTech, Wipro, and their mid-tier peers, the common thread is to boost utilisation, control costs, and build a workforce shaped less by numbers and more by expertise.

Seven of these outsourcers-Infosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd, LTIMindtree Ltd, Coforge Ltd, Mphasis Ltd, Persistent Systems Ltd and Hexaware Technologies-utilized more of their exi...