The Hindu Business Line : IT firms are back in hiring mode

Mumbai, Sept. 12 IT professionals finally have cause for cheer. With lateral hiring making a comeback in the software industry, albeit in a small way, they can get salary hikes, or change jobs. This renewed buoyancy can be attributed to a spate of new deal wins and signs of recovery in the US.

However, campus recruits from the 2007-08 batches will have to wait longer.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), excluding its subsidiaries, expects 50 per cent more lateral hires, or experienced hands, this quarter compared to the previous sequential quarter, its head of human resource, Mr Ajoy Mukherjee, told Business Line.

The company has already exceeded its last quarter’s gross lateral hiring figure of 384 with almost a month to go for the period to end.

“Though lateral hiring at TCS is still controlled, we have requirements in niche areas due to new customer wins,” said Mr Mukherjee. Demand is more for people with high-end techno-functional skills in enterprise solutions and infrastructure management, he added.

Increase in job ads

Industry observers say that the number of IT-related advertisements in newspapers and job portals has doubled in the last two months. In a series of recently released job ads, Cognizant has been scouting for professionals with 3-12 years experience for its engineering and manufacturing practice.

In the current quarter, lateral hiring is expected to be 12-15 per cent higher than the three months ended June, according to Mr E. Balaji, CEO of manpower consultancy firm Ma Foi. “Though these are early days, things are definitely looking up for the industry,” he said.

Throughout last year, IT companies steered clear from wage hikes and promotions due to the freefall in demand for their services. However, all that is gradually changing now.

Salary hikes

On the basis of employees’ performance, MNC firm Datacraft will give salary hikes this fiscal in India, its Chief Operating Officer for India, Mr Shailendra Badoni, said.

“Since we are nearing our year-end, we are in the process of evaluating the quantum of hikes. But they (hikes) will be there for sure.” Datacraft, incidentally, follows a fiscal calendar ending September. However, no such luck is in store for employees at Infosys Technologies which, according to its spokesperson, continues to have a freeze on promotions and wage hikes this fiscal.

Recently, Mahindra Satyam reinstated the variable portion of salaries of employees though the bigger issue of the 8,000 campus recruits waiting in the wings is still to be resolved.

“As a company, we have been through the worst and things will only improve from here on. We are waiting for business to further improve before we can start getting campus recruits on board and hence we cannot give a timeframe,” a Mahindra Satyam spokesperson said.

L&T Infotech, which was also in the running for Satyam, e-mailed a bunch of its campus recruits recently telling them that it would induct only a small batch (this month) from the 1,000-and-odd candidates of 2007-08. Sources say that December could see some more joining the list, with the rest scheduled to wait longer.

Similarly, the process of getting on board freshers of 2007-08 is still not through at Wipro Technologies and is expected to go well into calendar 2009.

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