In future, a BTech is not adequate to get a good job, one must have an M.Tech and specialisation, said T V Mohandas Pai, former HR head and ex-chief financial officer of IT major Infosys.

"My advice to all the people in colleges: please do MTech and specialise, and learn coding on your own by taking extra classes, because in future most companies will hire you based on your coding knowledge."

"They are not going to catch you raw and give you training for six months and pay for it. Why should they waste their time? They will test you on your coding skills and if you know very good coding, they will hire you," Mr Pai told news agency Press Trust of India.

"In future if you want to have a job, you must have M.Tech, you must know coding and you must be an expert. You must have some level of expertise," he said.

Asked about salary of freshers not growing in the Information Technology (IT) industry in the past two decades, Mr Pai termed it as a "great tragedy". This is because the whole industry is not growing at a fast pace, he said.

"Supply (the number of software engineers) has gone up, (but commensurate) demand is not there," said Mr Pai.

Global spending in IT is projected to grow only two per cent this year, a figure which was 3-4 per cent earlier. "That is also having an impact," he said.