Email
Print
ShareBangalore: It’s raining jobs in the information technology (IT) sector again, and Bangalore will be the main beneficiary of this with the city accounting for 25% of the 2-lakh plus software professionals employed every year in the country.
The employment engine, which had choked last year due to the global economic slowdown, is rolling again with the revival of the western markets where 80% of the IT clients are concentrated.
E Balaji, chief executive officer (CEO) of Ma Foi Management Consultant Ltd, says volumes of the people hired by technology companies - captives of MNCs and domestic - will shoot up across levels in the current year.
“If the (job) market continues to go the way it is now then we will see hiring happening across all levels - from entry to mid and senior. Companies have already started talking of hiring in huge numbers,” he said.
Balaji expects employment rate in the software industry this year to jump 12% over last year, when companies had pruned human resource (HR) costs by laying off people or cutting salaries to offset the impact of recession on their business.
Second largest IT company Infosys Technologies is set to overshoot its hiring guidance by 4000 for this fiscal that ends in March.
The company will hire 24,000 techies against its earlier estimate of 20,000.
TV Mohandas Pai, human resources head of the Infosys, has announced his company will make 15,000 campus offers, of which 8,000 have already been made. He estimates the industry to hire 3.5 lakh techies this year compared to the 2 lakh techies that were being hired in previous years.
Infosys’ business process outsourcing (BPO) arm will also recruit
2,000 more people as business prospects improve this year.
Global consulting major Accenture, which has a headcount of over 40,000 in India, will add 8,000 people and Honeywell 1000 in 2010.
And it’s not just the large companies that are rushing to beef up their employee-base. Smaller players like Omega Healthcare, Datacraft India and others are also scaling up workforce in anticipation of new projects.
“Last year, we were hiring, on an average, 60-65 people every month. Over the last three months, our average has gone up to 80-100 per month. It will be at the level or higher going forward looking at the pipeline of contracts,” said Omega Healthcare president and chief executive officer (CEO) Gopi Natarajan.
Datacraft India, which will soon begin work on a financial inclusion project, is racing against time to bring on board 200-300 engineers.
“We need them urgently for the first phase of this project (financial inclusion). For the second phase also, we will hire right now because we don’t follow a policy of being reactive but of being pro-active,” said Shailendra Badoni, chief operating officer (COO) of Datacraft, which is increase its workforce of 1500-plus by 25% this year.
And as tech firms making a beeline for software professionals, pay scales of techies are expected to move northwards. Rajesh A R, vice president - temporary staffing - of TeamLease Services Pvt Ltd, projects salaries to climb up, on an average, by 8%-10% across all levels.
