IT job market witnesses hiring spree

Punita Jasrotia Phukan / New Delhi

Good times seem to be back again for the Indian IT recruitment market. Industry reports predict a much healthier growth in the past three to four months compared to the last two quarters. Many IT majors are on a hiring spree and have already chalked out their recruitment budgets.

Leading the bandwagon is the BPO sector, which is experiencing tremendous growth. According to Arjun Vaznaik, the chief operating officer of Tracmail, this sector is growing at a rate of more than 50 percent on a year-on-year basis. Tracmail, he informs, plans to increase its workforce by 60 percent.

Industry experts point out that besides the ITES sector, healthcare and bio-sciences are other emerging growth areas. “The market is especially ripe for the better-trained, globalised in outlook and proficient personnel. The market of the future will be heavily weighed in favour of techno-managers,” says R Shekar, senior vice president and head of HR for corporate strategy and business excellence at Polaris Software Lab.

Who’s hiring?

Besides BPO companies, other big organisations have also planned their expansion and recruitment strategies. Says Hitesh Oberoi, director of sales and marketing of naukri.com, “Most software companies like Wipro, Satyam, Accenture Technology Solutions, Cognizant, HCL Technologies, Kanbay, Geometric Software Solutions and Adobe are hiring once more. In fact, compared to the last six-eight months, we have 30 percent more IT and telecom related jobs on the site.” According to Oberoi, the bigger companies are expected to recruit around 100-500 software professionals each, in the coming months. Interestingly, these will be “new hires” and not “replacements”.

Says Shrihari Udupa, director of human resources for Oracle India, “Presently, the company has close to 3,159 employees (as of May 2003), and has plans of recruiting up to 4,000 by end of this year.” Pune-based Kanbay is planning to hire 800 professionals this year and create a 3,000 strong team in India in the next three years, informs Geetanjali Khatri, the India recruitment head of Kanbay. EMC meanwhile plans to increase its workforce at their Bangalore-based IDC from 20 engineers to 100 engineers by the end of the year.

Polaris aims to recruit senior and mid-level management personnel and campus freshers. ICICI Infotech plans to hire 1,000 software professionals at its existing software development centres (based in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore), by the year 2005. Satyam Computer Services and Accel Technologies are also on a hiring spree.

Sanjay Baxla, vice president of human resource for HCL Comnet informs, “Besides campus recruitment that we undertake every year in May-June, we are recruiting experienced IT professionals from the industry as well,” he says. The company plans to increase their current workforce of 700 to over 1000 by end of 2003. Xansa also plans to double its strength in the coming year. Presently, the company has close to 1,000 professionals. It has set up new facilities in Chennai and Noida and is in the second phase of recruiting manpower for these state-of-the-art workplaces. The company already has a presence in Noida, Chennai and Pune.

Convergys, the US-based billing software and customer care services giant, plans to build four more call centres in India to add to the existing two. Earlier, in April, the company said that it hoped to double its head count in the country to 6,500.

Skills in demand

The demand is for experienced software professionals with domain expertise. There is also a great demand for consultative skills in different areas. Kanbay’s current requirements include developers, project managers and business analysts. “In terms of skill sets, the requirement is for people with expertise in providing business solutions, subject matter experts and practice leaders. We are also looking out for domain experts with technical management skills for our financial services,” says Khatri. The company is looking at skills in mainframe (middle to senior), .NET and Java professionals, senior developers, architects and testing professionals. HCL Perot Systems is looking for people with expertise in the areas of IBM mainframe, JD Edwards, Oracle, J2EE, .Net and C++. “In terms of skill sets there is a definite trend towards packaged software and domain expertise, so experience in SAP and ERP is sought after. In addition, there is a demand for IBM and Java trained professionals,” says T Ravi, the senior vice president of human resource at Satyam Computers.

“Our focus will be mainly on outsourcing services which includes application and infrastructure management. We will also be doing increasing business in ERP package implementation,” says Srivastava of CGE&Y. The company plans to increase its strength to around 2,000 professionals by the year-end. HCL Comnet is currently hiring professionals with three to ten years of experience in the areas of operating systems, messaging, IT service management tools, databases, telecom, storage, Web technologies, security, networks, desktop and Quality. For ICICI Infotech, the requirement is almost in all the areas of software development, ERP products, banking verticals. The company is also recruiting IT security consultants and other software and programming experts. Xansa is looking for experts in IBM Mainframes, SAP, Microsoft .Net, Oracle, J2EE, CICS, DB2 and Cobol besides others.

A mature market

IT job market is undergoing a major transitory phase with a mix of onshore-offshore model. “We have moved much beyond just the software export market to capture larger chunks of IT business that encompasses more technical domains like the organisation’s entire IT infrastructure—management of data centres, networks, security, e-biz and enterprise helpdesk operations. These areas are highly technology intensive and need 24x7 expert services. In effect, the Indian IT jobs market has matured to become stable rather than project oriented. Today, professionals prefer to do global projects sitting in their home country rather than flying out for project-based assignments. Indians (or Indian companies) are getting highly paying technical jobs, opportunity to work on challenging technologies and systems right at home without leaving for the Silicon Valley or Singapore,” says Baxala.

Agrees Milind Jadhav, the vice president of HR at Patni who points out that the current demand-supply situation is driven by the availability of specialised skill sets. In addition, the present emphasis is more on business domain knowledge, technology platform knowledge, process knowledge, customer environment knowledge, reusability, methodology or tools.

Industry experts point out that the improving job scenario does not translate into higher salaries. However, there might be some improvements in the mid-level, with entry level salaries reducing a step further. Says Ravi of Satyam, “Considering the past experiences, the professionals are not expecting much changes in their salaries. They are more realistic and have reached a level of maturity. Another very interesting thing is that people join the company understanding what the future holds for them and same is true from the company’s perspective.” Not an explosive, but measured growth is expected, which would be centred around metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. Top Hirers - Box items