TCS, Wipro hiring plans

The likes of TCS, Wipro and Keane are either going slow on recruitment or are hiring more number of trained hands.
“During 2008, recruitments in IT/ITeS sector has seen a fall of 20-22 % as compared to the same period last year. The players have become more cautious,” says Bangalore-based HR firm Ikya Human Capital Solutions chairman Marcel Parker.
“There is a delay in decision making . While most IT firms have deferred their hiring, some have postponed their training programmes. A few have opted for judicious justin-time recruitment process,” Parker told ET.
TCS, that recruits about 18,000 employees every year has decided to make significant cuts in recruitment patterns to tide over the crisis. “This year we are not going for any mass recruitment. We have cut down on at least 20% of the total recruitment,” said a senior HR official of TCS in Gujarat. “Our focus has largely been to hire more experienced candidates than go in for fresh recruits”, the official added.
Similarly, international IT firm, Keane is not just going slow on recruitments, but have also adopted a ‘just-in-time-approach’ on hiring. “Since the last three years, we used to hire 30-40 % more people than the previous year. But this year we are sticking to almost the same number of people we recruited last year”, said Keane India senior VP S G Raja Sekharan.
“Since January we have already made job offers to 3,000 students, which is in the range of what we had did last year. We do not want to make job offers and scale back (if market conditions deteriorate),” he said.
“The confidence level in the markets is low compared to the levels that existed three years back. It is very difficult to forecast where the markets are headed in the recent future,” Mr Sekharan said.
IT-giant Wipro has introduced stringent ‘quality measures’ into their hiring pattern. “We have made our process even more stringent and brought in measures to ensure quality of hire. Innovative measures have been introduced including setting up a Talent Quality Group within Talent Acquisition”, said Wipro Talent Acquisition VP Pradeep Bahirwani.
In order to hire quality manpower, Wiro has also started campus hiring in US and UK. “We have pioneered programmes like Wipro Academy of Software Excellence (WASE) which helps graduates learn while they work on projects with us. We have an active campus program in India and have also started campus hiring in US and UK,” he said.
India is the top choice for companies looking to outsource R&D with an offshoring business there expected to grow 23 percent to $21 billion by 2012 and a talent pool in its largest hub—Bangalore--second only to Silicon Valley, according to a study by a management consulting firm. India employs about 130,000 engineers....
The number of outsourced R&D centers in India has leapt from 180 in 2000 to 594 this year, according to the first report on India's R&D centers from Zinnov (Sunnyvale, Calif.). The huge talent pool in India has been fueling that growth, Zinnov said in its report.
About 140,000 engineers currently work in India's R&D centers and another 110,000 are working for companies that serve them, a larger group than previously believed, the company reported. The engineering talent pool in Bangalore, Zinnov reported, is second only to that of Silicon Valley.
The India Semiconductor Association released a report in April projecting the design sector there will grow by more than 21 percent during the next three years to $10.96 billion. It estimated about India employs about 130,000 engineers, the vast majority of them in software.
India is attracting and retaining more of its native technical workforce, according to the Zinnov report. About 30,000 of India's engineers have returned in recent years from jobs in the U.S. The number of graduates from IIT and other top Indian universities relocating to the U.S. is on the decline, it said.
The maturing talent pool is driving an increase in the sophistication of jobs handled in the India R&D centers. About ten percent of the projects in the centers now involve full soup-to-nuts development of a new product, a slice that is expected to increase to 30 percent by 2012, according to Zinnov.
The report estimates the cost per employee in India grew at 16.2 percent between 2005 and 2007. However, Zinnov expects the cost growth to slow as pay raises and real estate prices moderate in the future.
At the Design Automation Conference earlier this year, the president of one of India's R&D firms estimated engineers salaries in India could rise to the levels of counterparts in the U.S. within a decade