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There is still demand for Indian Talent

        The dramatic events shaking the global economy have raised alarms among India’s young IT professionals. They worry about the effects of the slowdown, but are hopeful that the resilient continuous growth of the Indian economy, coupled with the pressure upon multinationals to restructure and consider the merits of more extensive offshoring, promise an exciting future.

        Job security has not been on top in the list of priorities of young Indian graduates of the previous five years. Opportunities to grow within a dynamic and challenging environment, job status and high remuneration packages were, for most, the main driving factors. Competition among businesses from all over the world meant that, often for the first time in their lives, graduates have had numerous options and high expectations. The placement officer in a well-known Pune University college told us last year that 90% of all IT graduates got placed within the first two weeks of the recruitment period.

        It has taken some months of global turmoil for confidence to slide. The biggest recruiters in the IT sector have cut down on hiring and in some cases have let people go. Articles all over the press reflect this (see side-box). From embattled Satyam to Infosys and from IBM to TCS and Wipro, most Indian IT giants are either involved in big numbers of redundancies, or have significantly reduced profits forecast. The immediate, rather natural, reaction is flight to security. There is a decline in attrition rates, entrepreneurial ventures and what is perceived as risky moves from established companies to start-ups (The Economist, Nov 2008). At the same time, an increasing number of internet blogs has popped-up, blogs with  titles like “Companies that fire most in India” and “India: Mass IT Layoffs in December 2008”, where numerous young IT professionals and graduates raise their concerns and complaints. Recent graduates, final year students and recruits on the bench, are the ones who are the most worried.

        Is the future of recent graduates and recruits gloomy then?  The answer is definitely NO. In the job market for highly skilled employees there is still much more demand than offer. Though decelerated, the Indian economy is still expected to grow by more than 6% and many badly hit multinationals have a lot of pressure to radically restructure and strengthen their offshore departments to cut down on cost. Research International, a market research firm, says she expects a salary hike in India next year, marginally less than in ’08 and NASSCOM, a body which represents India’s software and computer services firms, says that 200000 additional jobs were created this year (The Economist, Nov 2008).These numbers may prove to be exaggerated, but still they are a strong indication of a job market that is not in crisis. Some more cautiously than others, most IT companies in India are still recruiting. Despite reduced revenue growth, Infosys is still planning massive recruitment. Other companies, that have been hit, find it difficult to make staff redundant due to legal hurdles. Currently, whenever any skilled workers are laid off they are instantly snapped up by other firms. The number of people who have lost their jobs is comparatively low and the worries expressed in the particularly busy blogs, probably reflect more how this generation feels, facing their first exposure to a global crisis, rather than the real prospects of the Indian IT industry. Not to mention the numerous blogs reflecting beliefs that the current shake-up of big multinationals will lead to a direct transfer of jobs from West to East. Higher in the ladder, skill-shortage is even more evident.  Managers who can work internationally are still especially hard to find and there is also an acute shortage of finance skills.

        Unlike the past few years, not all graduates will have a dream IT job waiting for them to come out of college. However, there is evidently still great demand for skilled IT employees. Expert journals (The Economist and HBR) are confident that, especially those graduates who make an effort to distinguish themselves in the eyes of employers, are bound to have many open options among desperately competing local and multinational companies.

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REFERENCES&LINKS

Reference

The Good (news)

  • NASSCOM says that 200000 additional jobs were created this year (The Economist, Nov 2008)

  • Cost-Cutting in New York but a boom in India (The New York Times, August 2008)

  • Still can’t get the staff (The Economist, Nov 2008).
The Bad (news)

  • IBM reduced graduate recruitment and fired 700 engineers in February 2008 (BusinessWeek, Feb 2008)

  • Embattled Satyam could make up to 4500 employees redundant (BusinessWeek, Sep 2008)

  • Wipro gives pink slip to 1,000 (IndiaTimes, Sep 2008)

and The Funny

When companies find imaginative ways of announcing redundancies

  • "dynamic rightsizing” = major cutbacks due to the dotcom crash (UBS, February 2003)

  • “change designed to restore profitability” = slashing 18 per cent of the workforce (Jefferies Group, December 2008)

  • “Credit Suisse accelerates implementation of strategic plan” = axing of 5,300 employees (Credit Swiss, December 2008)