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Indian software firms begin to hire again

M D Riti in Bangalore and Priya Ganapati in Mumbai

"The information technology industry is expected to generate over one million jobs in the next one year," says Karnataka IT Minister D M Inamdar.

Normally, Inamdar's statement would have sounded like wishful thinking, considering the gloominess in which the software industry has been wallowing over the past year. However, a closer look at the IT hires over the past quarter indicates that there is more than a little hope for those seeking employment.

Many a pink slip had been handed out to IT professionals in the last few quarters as the IT meltdown depressed the job markets, but the April-June period was like a breath of fresh air with firms looking to increase their headcount by a sizeable margin.

And the IT whiz-kids are actually beaming all over again as recruitments begin to perk up, especially in the IT Enabled Services arena.

Wipro Technologies tops the list with a gross addition of 1,100 employees over the first quarter of this financial year. The company also acquired 22 new customers during this period.

Its sister concern, Wipro Infotech, on the other hand, added 150 people during the same period, and 12 new customers. "We operate mostly on the model of undertaking projects offshore, and that business is doing well enough to justify these hires," says a Wipro spokesman.

But Azim Premji's company would not say how many would be on board by this financial year-end.

Says Vivek Paul, president of Wipro Technologies, its global software services business: "It will be in line with our revenue growth."

Software giant Infosys hired a total of 566 employees during the last three months, as compared to only 75 in the previous quarter.

"We hire according to our business needs," says Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani.

Given the fact that there are very few jobs going and lots of aspiring IT engineers available, companies have become quite strict in their selection criteria. "We look for academic prowess, and also assess the ability of an engineer to take knowledge gained from situations and apply them to other new situations," explains Nilekani.

Tata Consultancy Services, the country's largest software exporter, hired 1,400 professionals in the quarter ending June 30, 2002. "We are planning to recruit 1,600 more in next three quarters," a TCS spokesman said.

Call centres, which had cut down on new recruits drastically post September 11, have begun to hire again.

24/7, for example, now recruits about 150 people a month on an average. "Call centers will continue to grow rapidly in India," predicts T S Hariharan, vice-president, 24/7.

He readily admits that while they mostly used to attract non-engineering graduates fluent in English earlier, they now get many engineers as well who come calling for jobs.

A shift in hiring trends in IT industry

"There is a remarkable increase in the number of 'value' jobs that are being created in the IT sector .What this means is that unlike in the past when companies were keen to hire plain vanilla programmers in any skill, nowadays firms want to hire professionals who apart from being good programmers bring skills like 'design', 'case tools' and 'architecture' skills," says Gautam Sinha, CEO, TVA Infotech, a Bangalore-based recruitment agency.

"This is because there is an increase in the engineering bases of multinational companies which are operating out of India and now these MNCs are relocating significant portions of their product development to India which is leading to an increase in demand for higher end skills," he says.

"The number of professionals returning from the United States continues to show an upward trend. This is happening partly because of the US slump, but - more importantly - because currently there are companies in India (MNCs as well as Indian firms) which are being able to offer jobs which are at a higher level (architecture) and therefore come with better work content and higher salaries," adds Sinha.

"Career paths for 'pure techies' are being created in larger numbers. Earlier one couldn't remain a pure tech person as one went up the corporate ladder, but that is no longer the case. In fact, there is a huge premium for hands on technology people in the 10-year-plus category," says Sinha.

"Also, there is a huge demand in the IT-Enabled Services sector and companies are hiring in large numbers for backend processing and call centres. Hiring is happening for, both, third party and company owned processing/call centres. These require good English speaking graduates and so the supply is also present."

He says that though recruitment levels may not exactly touch the 1999, early-2000 levels, hiring at the three-year-plus levels has definitely picked up. "And the upswing is quite significant compared to the last year. People are also more keen to change jobs as the general outlook of gloom in the job market is on the wane," says Sinha.

Meltdown sparks off rise in number of crimes too

Interestingly, though, computer training institutes are wary of promising jobs and stipends to students now, ever since the slump. Some of those who did are now in trouble.

The Bangalore cops get numerous complaints from students who say that they were cheated by computer training institutes. Senior police officers admit that the pressure to take action against software and hardware training institutes, which have allegedly been duping many students of hundreds of thousands of rupees, is now greater than before.

During the IT boom, computer training institutes mushroomed in the city and put out advertisements promising students stipend and placement after the completion of the course.

When the slowdown hit the IT job market, these institutes found that they could not deliver on their promises of stipends and jobs.

For instance, nearly a hundred students recently staged a demonstration in front of one such computer institute in J P Nagar alleging that they were cheated. The students, who paid Rs 60,000 as fee for a six-month course, said that they were neither paid Rs 2,000 stipend nor were they placed in high-profile software companies at the end of the course.

An officer attached to the city crime branch said: "We receive a number of complaints of cheating by computer training institutions. Perhaps, this is due to the slump in the IT sector which has forced many companies which were on a hiring spree to freeze recruitment."

Information thrown up as an offshoot of all these cases indicates that the loss in terms of money caused by economic offences is double the loss caused due to property theft in Bangalore every year.

The police maintain that intelligence gathering is one of the toughest jobs when it comes to economic offences, as they are under-equipped in terms of technical knowledge and equipment.

Though there is an economic offences wing in the corps of detectives, it takes up only investigations that have been entrusted to it by the state government. The cyber police station attached to the same corps is also just finding its feet.

As for the crime branch's fraud squad, its personnel are quite at sea when it comes to investigating economic offences. Now, the Reserve Bank of India suggested to the state police that it should set up a separate economic intelligence wing. The Madhya Pradesh police already has such a division.

But maybe, the bad days of the Bangalore IT industry, which led to most of these problems, will soon be over and Bangalore's boom business will start doing well again.

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