Outsourcing sector strong on hiring

THE Indian outsourcing industry is one of the few sectors to be directly hit by the woes of overseas firms. But it is also one of the few sectors to still be hiring in tens of thousands despite the slowdown. The top five IT firms are recruiting over 80,000 people this fiscal after considering revised hiring targets.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies, have adopted a strategy of staggered recruitments but so far neither has scaled back their hiring targets announced earlier this year. TCS, in fact, will add a shade lesser than what its number one customer will axe. While Citigroup, which is now its number one client, has said it will shed over 50,000 jobs, TCS will hire about 48,000 people. Of this, 30,000-35,000 will be new hires and 12,500 will come through its acquisition of Citigroup Global Services. Infosys, which attracted flak from shareholders in the tech slowdown of 2000-01 for pampering employees despite the business downturn, has also taken a strategic decision to honour all the 25,000 job offers it has made. About 11,000 have already joined the firm and another 18,700 are expected to join before the fiscal end. Some like Satyam have revised their hiring targets for the fiscal from 15,000 to 8,000 after the crisis deepened with the fall of Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions.
Both Wipro and HCL Technologies, the number three and number five software exporters respectively, do not put out hiring targets but a Wipro spokesperson said the firm had added about 8,000 people in the last 12 months. HCL Tech’s senior vicepresident, head — talent management group, Ravishankar B, said the firm added 5,597 employees as on September ’08. The list of firms hiring in India also include the likes of CapGemini, which has offshore operations in the country. CapGemini India executive chairman Salil Parekh said, “We will end 2008 with 21,000 employees and grow the number by 25-35% next year. Our Q3 numbers indicate we are still seeing demand. We will have greater clarity about next year’s numbers once the budgeting exercise is completed.”