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Has
the recruitment market emerged from the malevolent effects of the
slowdown? One would think so, if the regular headlines in mainstream
media reporting frenzied hiring by top IT companies in India, is
anything to go by. Strangely, these euphoric reports do not exactly
match the spirit of the market, which reflects a muddled picture.
The ground reality remains that while many companies have started
formulating their hiring plans, if you leave out the ITES sector
and a few niche segments (in particular demand for mainframe and
ERP professionals), the hiring spree is not of the scale generally
believed. All the hype notwithstanding, companies are only recruiting
when they have projects in hand, and that too very very cautiously.
 Top-notch
headhunters are also cautiously optimistic in the highly mixed recruitment
scenario. “We do not see this happening at the scale we are
informed. Companies are wary, there are far too many rounds of interviews,
and selection criteria are getting tougher. Good quality people
are difficult to find,” says Purnima Das, managing director,
Kelly Services, adding, “It is safer to say that firing has
stopped!” Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO and managing director of Bangalore-based
The Headhunters, also believes that there is no clear evidence that
IT companies are recruiting on a large scale. “In my opinion,
for the IT industry, to return to the boom generated by telecom
sector will take several years, if at all such a thing happens.
On the other hand, the ITES sector is recruiting, and the boom is
certainly on,” he adds.
There
are others of course who evince clear optimism. Tarun Bali, CEO,
ABC Consultants, points out that sentiments are definitely on the
positive side as most of the companies have expressed hiring plans
and a few of them have started recruiting as well. Incidentally,
companies are paying lower rates to recruitment consultants for
large volumes of business.
Dhruv
Shenoy, vice president, marketing, Monsterindia.com, admits that
while recruitment is perhaps not of the same scale as what it was
in the year 2000, it is sharply higher than a depressed year like
2001, though IT companies are hiring only when they have firm projects.
Staff-on-bench is evidently a thing of the past.
 Which
are these companies in terms of size and specialisation? Market
trend indicates that it is essentially only the big ones that are
hiring. These are the organisations that have been able to recover
faster in the aftermath of the slowdown and have managed to perform
well. This is understandable, as smaller organisations, still to
recoup in the adverse market conditions, have put all recruitment
plans on hold. “Those that have large offshore centres like
Accenture, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (IT Consulting), TCS and
Mastek, have started hiring since they are getting projects other
than the US,” adds Bali.
The
need is also for senior and middle level specialised positions,
like those with at least three years of experience. The lookout
is only for highly skilled professionals with proven expertise in
their particular field. Demand exists for skills like ERP infrastructure
and maintenance, SAP, Oracle Financials, Datawarehousing, EAI, Telecom
(VOIP, Voice XML) and .Net. The hottest in
demand are the mainframe professionals.
Interest-ingly, because of the lack of availability of mainframe
professionals.
Interestingly, because of the lack of availability of mainframe
professionals, it is extremely difficult to find skilled and experienced
personnel in this field and the few who exist are currently being
sought after by most large IT companies. According to Rajaram Agrawal,
managing director, TalentAhead, those SAP professionals who were
at loose ends about eight to 10 months back, are again in the reckoning
and many others are joining SAP training institutes as a result
of their market demand.
“Nobody
is asking for freshers and this trend is going to continue in the
near future,” adds Agrawal. While previously, students from
other engineering streams like Civil and Mining were also absorbed
into the IT fold, now only those who have specialised in computers
will be able to get jobs. Shenoy however believes that the demand
for graduates will increase with the growing requirements of the
ITES sector and engineering graduates are likely to see a much better
placement next year, if the software industry continues to recover.
Salaries
Dropping
Considering
that it is now an employer’s market, the terms and conditions
obviously differ (from the HR perspective). It is commonly acknowledged
that salaries of candidates whose skills are now easily available
have dropped between 10 percent to 30 percent and many are also
without jobs. Even the few fortunate freshers who have been recruited
have no other option but to accept salaries which are often lower
than that offered last year. Consequently, organisations can now
have the best pick of talent and form world-class teams at much
lesser cost. With the streamlining of salaries, increments and incentives
have also become performance-based. Lakshmikanth informs that some
companies have become very strict in the appraisal systems and the
people who ranked in the bottom 10 percent are warned that unless
their performance improved during the next quarter, they would be
asked to quit. Then there are a few organisations where salaries
are being delayed, sometimes by two months and that too in installments.
There
are some highly skilled people who continue to demand “better-than-market”
salaries, and their remuneration is in no way affected by the dismal
market conditions. Bali feels that there is tremendous potential
in terms of re-employment of foreign returnees who happen to be
top-class. This is bound to have some impact on the domestic employment
market. The flip side of it all is the fact that following the slowdown,
companies have become very serious, which has brought about sanctity
in the recruitment market. Third party contracting is also increasing,
particularly in cases when organisations either do not want to hire
additional people for a project or are having problems finding professionals
with requisite skills for a particular job.
Recruitment
experts however fear a widening manpower demand and supply gap in
the near future. “There is no doubt that demand for basic as
well as niche skills will continue in the years to come, but this
rise in demand has to be met in equal measure by the readiness of
the training institutes. Otherwise, we are quite likely to see the
gap widening,” states Shenoy. Agrawal reiterates that the engineering
and MCA courses should be more focussed and training in niche segments
should be imparted at initial stages to enhance their expertise
in a particular field. Lakshmikanth believes that while the software
industry will grow at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent (in terms
of value), demand for additional manpower will grow at a rate of
25 percent to 30 percent, because of the tremendous pressure on
pricing from customers. Consequently, companies will continue to
be very strict in terms of salary increases. In conclusion, some
words of advice for job seekers:
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If you are a fresher, grab the first job that you get, it is important
to have work experience even if it means moving to another city.
The market is really bad for freshers.
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If you are working and your company is among the top 50 in India
please think three times before you change your job. You might
be jumping from the frying pan into the fire
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PEOPLE
