India’s entry-level hiring landscape underwent a visible shift in 2025. As businesses accelerated digital adoption and AI integration, employers began reassessing what “job-ready” truly means for freshers. The focus moved away from narrow academic credentials toward a broader mix of applied skills, adaptability, and digital fluency.
Based on TeamLease EdTech’s analysis of employer hiring intent and fresher skill expectations through 2025 via Career Outlook Report HY2, 2025 clear patterns have emerged around what organisations value at the entry level. Drawing from an employer survey of 1,065 and ongoing engagement across work-integrated and early-career programmes, these insights reflect how fresher roles evolved in 2025 and the skills employers are expected to prioritise further in 2026.
As organisations prepare for 2026, fresher hiring is expected to become more skills-driven, outcome-oriented, and experience-aware than ever before. Based on hiring patterns observed through 2025, five skill areas clearly stood out and are set to matter even more in the year ahead.
In 2025, employers began prioritising workplace readiness over theoretical knowledge. Freshers who demonstrated hands-on exposure through projects, internships, simulations, or work-integrated programmes were viewed as lower-risk hires. By 2026, this expectation is likely to become standard, with employers assuming baseline familiarity with real-world workflows.
- AI Fluency as a Working Skill
2025: Employers valued freshers who could comfortably use AI tools for research, documentation, analysis, and routine problem-solving.
2026: The emphasis will shift to responsible and contextual AI use—understanding limitations, validating outputs, and applying AI thoughtfully rather than blindly.
- Data Awareness Across Roles
2025: Basic comfort with data reading reports, dashboards, and metrics emerged as a differentiator even outside technical roles.
2026: Employers will double down on data interpretation and insight generation, expecting freshers to explain what the data means and how it informs decisions.
- Digital & Tool-Based Proficiency
2025: Familiarity with digital tools, collaboration platforms, and automated workflows became a baseline expectation.
2026: Freshers will be expected to navigate multiple tools seamlessly, adapt quickly to new systems, and maintain productivity in tech-enabled environments.
- Learning Agility and Adaptability
2025: Employers rewarded freshers who showed willingness to learn, reskill, and take feedback positively. It can be identified from their certifications and courses in their CV and if they have the agility of learning while doing.
2026: Learning agility will evolve into a core hiring signal, as job roles continue to change faster than formal curricula can keep pace.
- Human-in-the-Loop Decision Making & Cross-Functional Execution
2025: Employers valued freshers who could communicate clearly within teams and follow defined processes, especially in hybrid and tech-enabled work environments.
2026: Employers will increasingly prioritise human-in-the-loop capabilities, the ability to interpret AI outputs, apply judgment, flag anomalies, collaborate across functions, and take accountability in decision-making workflows where AI assists but does not decide.
Across sectors, employers are increasingly looking for balanced skill profiles freshers who combine digital comfort with human judgment. Entry-level roles are no longer designed for long ramp-up periods; instead, organisations expect freshers to contribute meaningfully within months, not years.
As hiring moves into 2026, the most employable freshers will be those who demonstrate applied skills, adaptability, and readiness to work in AI-enabled environments.
The transition from 2025 to 2026 marks a clear shift: employability is no longer defined by degrees alone, but by how quickly freshers can translate skills into impact. Organisations that align hiring with these evolving skill expectations—and candidates who prepare accordingly will be best positioned for the next phase of workforce transformation.
Methodology
The insights are based on a primary employer survey conducted to assess hiring intent for freshers and degree apprentices. The study covered a total sample size of 1,065 employers across sectors.Of the total respondents, 755 employers indicated intent to hire freshers, while 206 employers indicated intent to hire degree apprentices, with an overlap of 32 employers planning to hire both. The survey was conducted between May and July 2025. Findings reflect employer perspectives on entry-level hiring requirements and skill preferences during 2025, with the 2026 outlook derived from observed hiring intent and evolving skill expectations.
