Companies hiring laterals with good salary hikes

Last year many laterals had to quit their jobs as the companies said that they cannot pay high salaries. But now the good times are back for the laterals as companies are hiring lateral and also offering good salary hikes.

In the latest quarter Infosys’s attrition rate has increased by 11.8% which is up from 11.6% in the quarter before, and a low of 10.8%. In general, this rise in attrition rate is feasible for the IT industry as year ago its attrition rate used to be 18-20% which fell to 5-6%. But it has moved up to 10-12%.

C Mahalingam, senior VP for HR in Symphony Services said, ‘‘Attrition has picked up. Jobs are being created. This year, people who stay back will get a tiny salary increment of 5-6%, while a job change will give them an increase of at least 10-15%. That’s why many are moving.’’ However TOI could not confirm about this from the concerned companies, but companies like IBM, Talisma and Yes Bank have certainly hired lateral – with two-three years’ experience and have offered salaries that were 50% to 100% higher than in their previous jobs.

IT Company Aditi’s CEO Pradeep Rathinam told his company has 100 open positions in India. He said, “We are looking for technical people, solution architects. People are asking for 40-50% hikes, but we expect to give about 20% hikes over their existing salaries.The slowdown has brought expectations down to more realistic levels.”

Two years ago there used to be mass hiring but this time it is not yet that kind. But as the companies get the orders it will be matter of time they will have to speed up their hiring drive. Manish Sabrawal, MD of manpower company TeamLease says, “After a severe drought, jobs are back again. Salaries will also get better moderately, from the negative to zero increments that one saw last year.”

Kris Laxmikanth, MD of Headhunters, stated in the tech sector the hiring process will take a little more time to speed up – “it’s currently waiting for customer budgets to be finalized” but infrastructure firms like GVK, GMR, L&T, IVRCL, and sectors like construction, media-advertisement, PR, event management, manufacturing, oil and gas, telecom, automotive and logistics, FMCG, tours & travel, consumer durables and banking and financial services and insurance have all begin hiring.

More jobs, more hiring of fresh IT/ITES in 2010

For 18 months companies did not do any hiring but now big or small all the companies have come out in the market in search of suitable candidates and on the other hand the freshers are also getting ready as the talent requirements have started creeping. However, the hiring process will take fast pace from April onwards.

It is expected that even in the worst conditions in 2010 around 50,000 fresh IT/ITES jobs are likely to get created as against zero fresher hiring except a very thin campus hiring – in the previous year. While in 2007 it was a bumper, over 3 lakh got hired even though the growth started getting low towards the third quarter of 2008, in this period total hiring done was only 1.8 lakh.

B S Murthy, CEO, Leadership Capital pointed out, with it the New Year will bring recovery in the hiring process and also general buoyancy could be seen across segments. “This means a complete change from the current skeletal and need-based hiring. The large volume-hiring realm (services space) will warm up by the second quarter of calendar 2010. A 15% increment in hiring volumes is expected in the first two quarters while the growth could cross 20% or double towards third and fourth quarter.”

Nirupama V G, MD, AdAstra said, the companies will start getting requirements like tsunami, most of the HR departments of corporates have already started  preparation for large scale hiring after being inactive for long time. “Normalcy will return to the industry by April. In addition to domestic hiring, India is going to emerge as a huge sourcing ground for global jobs across segments, positions and profiles.”

According to Mohan Menon, CEO, Sentient Consulting, “When we enjoy a vantage position in human resources, talent is still a scare commodity in global markets. The year 2010 is going to be bright year for India in terms of domestic and global placements.”

Infosys visiting campuses, plans to offer jobs to 13,000 freshers

Infosys Technologies is India’s second largest information technology Services Company was the first one to visit campuses this year and plans to offer jobs to 13,000 freshers for 2010-11. Although in comparison to 2007, this year company will be visiting to few of the engineering colleges for campus recruitments.

The company sources said it took this decision because the conversion rates (the number of people who get offers and finally join the company) in the last two years has improved dramatically. Infosys’ Senior VP and Group Head for HR, Nandita Gurjar, told till 2008, the company used to visit 1,050 engineering colleges for campus recruitments. But in 2008 the number dropped to 700. Most likely the figure is going to fall to 500 or 550 this year, and the company has already started visiting campus for interviews.

Gurjar told Business Standard, “In 2008, when we made the campus offers, the conversion dramatically improved and this is the reason why we did not require going to so many colleges. Even now, though we plan to visit 700 colleges, we are expecting to get the required numbers from 500 or 550 colleges”.

She told usually the conversion rate in case of campus recruitment is around 70 per cent, which has increased to 73 per cent. Previously, Infosys board member and head of HR T V Mohandas Pai had told the company might hire 20,000 people at the gross level for the financial year starting April 1, 2010. Thus according to this, Infosys might have to hire 7,000 laterals (people with experience) for 2010-11.

In the meantime, Infosys has started the process of filling up the post of CEO of its BPO division, after the former CEO Amtabh Chaudhry decision to quit. Gurjar told there are five candidates for the post and all of them are from within the company.

In CY 10 India Inc to witness 20-30% pick up in hirings

According to top industry official as the economic growth is moving up by 6 to 7% and the global economy too is bouncing back thus in CY 10 India Inc will probably hire 20-30 per cent more talent.

As told by R L Bhatia, recruitment consultancy firm, Fun & Joy At Work’s Chief Executive Officer to PTI, “In 2010 (January-December), I envisage atleast 20-30 per cent increase in recruitments by companies”.

Bhatia informed this year, the hiring will be over and above the 30 per cent dip that was witnessed last year.

A nine year old recruitment firm, Fun & Joy At Work with offices across Mumbai and Singapore claims to provide talent consultancy to a host of Indian companies across sectors.

Bhatia informed some of the sectors like BPOs, bio-technology, media, telecom and finance will possibly witness higher hiring.

Bhatia further said, the Indian economy is likely achieving six to seven per cent growth and substantial investments into India is on increase and added, “This will trigger an increased hiring.”

In spite of slowdown, Bhatia pointed out companies have gone for hiring but less in number.

He added, “Maybe they hired less, but they hired nevertheless”.

He stated, his own firm had some 30 companies which is planning to hire around 20,000-30,000 personnel.

He added, “Industry is exercising caution now. As a result, companies are investing only when and where it is necessary. They are sensibly investing in people or human resources”.

Small companies hiring more people

Earlier people preferred to work with large multinationals but now they are accepting offers of small companies looking at the bright future.

A 52-year old Madan Kotnala who throughout his 30-year career, had worked only with large multinationals like Federal Mogul and Tudor India, two months ago took an exceptional decision of to join Su-Kam. He was GM of US-headquartered Exide Technologies (christened Tudor India) that sells the Prestolite brand of batteries has now joined inverter maker Su-Kam as the head of its battery business. Kotnala informed, “Su-Kam is a growing company in a fast growing segment. I could see that it is entering into new segments such as telecom and auto, and there was an opportunity to contribute to its growth from one to multiple products”.

Last year in October Su-Kam with held is plans as banks in wake of global crises had slowed down giving loans. Kunwer Sachdev, managing director, Su-Kam said, “We had just started new solar and telecom verticals at our company when this happened”. Now, over the last few months company has again started hiring. The company will be hiring 30 senior and mid level executives for its solar business and another 10-12 for its new telecom business.

Rajeev Karwal, founder, Milagrow, a small business advisory firm pointed out, “As the economy improved SMEs have restarted expansion plans that had been dormant during the slowdown”. Companies have been looking for talent at all levels across sectors and the last two quarters have been much better. “The improvement might not be comparable to the growth in the stock market but companies are starting to hire for expansion and growth,” says E Balaji, CEO, Ma Foi, an international HR service provider.

According to Sachdev companies which are still growing, such as his can provide greater challenges to senior professionals who have worked for long in larger companies and multinational firms. He said, “They get a lot more recognition here, and get to play a crucial role in the growth of the business by bringing in their experience”. He added being an entrepreneur himself, he gets to learn a great deal from their experience.

In July-September quarter there has been increase in hiring by 40-50% over the previous quarter and about 60-70% higher than the January-March quarter, said Amit Tandon, director, Empryean Partners, an HR services firm. But salary expectations at present are 10-15% lower than before and some professionals who lost their jobs during the downturn are accepting 30-35% lower salaries. Tandon also pointed out that small and medium companies now have got a better opportunity in campus hiring, especially at tier-II colleges.

Apparel retailer Ritu Wears also faced a hard time during the recession and had to put its expansion plans on hold. “Non-availability of capital was the main reason,” says Sanjay Sahni, managing director, Ritu Wears, a 116-crore (revenues) company. During this time still it managed to open three stores this year. At present the company is in the process of hiring 35 senior and mid-management people as it has plans to open seven new stores in the next 12 months. Recently it has hired people from larger retail companies such as Pantaloon, Shoppers Stop, Shahi Exports, Lifestyle and Wadhawan Retail. Sahni told he was able to attract many people at around 10% lower salaries with the promise of faster growth opportunities.

Parag Tandon, who has recently joined Ritu Wears as a business development manager from Pantaloon is eager about his new job. Before joining he conducted thorough research on Ritu Wears and other smaller retailers. “The company has shown impressive growth over the last two years. It has professionalized and I feel I can add value to the company with my experience,” says Tandon.

Milagrow, which recently started an HR services division, is responsible for the hiring for Ritu Wears. Karwal stated today professionals are now looking for quality jobs rather than taking decisions on salary bases. “Even fresh MBA students are willing to work for small companies and take on responsibilities,” he says.

Even there is a rise in the hiring of IT and ITeS by small firms, now it’s not as much about the work culture it is more about opening up of new business opportunities. Currently almost 10% of SMEs (small and medium enterprises with up to 999 employees) in India are planning to hire additional staff, as per the records of recent study conducted by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners. According to the study the impact of the current economic downturn on local and regional economies is of greater concern to small businesses than to their medium business counterparts. However these same small businesses did not get much affected by changes in the national and global economy as the mid-market firms. Kalyan Banga, research analyst at AMI-Partners said, “A major reason for this is that most small businesses (84%) have only a single location, earn almost three-fourths of their revenues from local areas, and their operations are mainly confined to local territories”.

Aerospace component maker Quest Global, which supplies to Boeing and Airbus, earned revenues of Rs 363 crore last fiscal, is now looking to hire more people after its future funding of $50 million comes through this November. “We need to raise fresh capital now to finance our expansion and hire new people,” says Ajit Prabhu, CEO, Quest Global. Prabhu informed the company has not decided how many will be hired, but according to source within the company the sales force is being largely ramped up in numbers.

Prof K Kumar who heads the business incubation cell at IIM Bangalore stated, “SMEs saw slower growth, and immediately put brakes on hiring. However they are now back”. BPO firm 24/7 Customer is planning to hire around 1,000 people this year as the globally the conditions are looking better, clients are repeating their orders and new orders are also coming aboard, said its chief marketing officer V Bharathwaj. The company which has been developing new technologies in its labs is proposed to hire PhDs, and Masters degree holders in mathematics and statistics to further push research. Therefore taking into consideration this figure, the total hiring go up to 1,500 people, which will be good in view of how hard the slowdown had hit the BPO industry.

Some of the companies like the Rs 35-crore Kevin Enterprises are waiting before they start hiring again. The company, which supplies process design solutions and equipment to the chemical, fertilizer and oil and gas industries, is expecting positive result as the economy is improving. “But we are not yet out of the woods,” informed its managing director Kevin Shah. He is expecting to do good business by the end of this fiscal, when he will start hiring. “We are waiting for the business to turn around so we can pick up the quality talent available in the market today,” he said.

IITs average pre-placement salaries lowered by about half per cent

Though the recession clouds are shedding away but it’s after effects can be felt. This year the average pre-placement salaries being offered to students of India’s foremost technology schools (IITs) have been lowered by about half in comparison to the same time last year, the sources informed.

Even the number of companies who have registered for final placements has also dropped drastically by 45% this year, an anonymous expert informed.

According to IIT Bombay officials the average salary for IIT students passing out this year has been reduced extensively from Rs9 lakh earlier to Rs5 lakh.

The IIT Kharagpur students are facing even graver situation as their salaries have been reduced by 65% to Rs 4 lakh.

At IIT Bombay up till now only 12 companies have registered for the final campus placements, as against to 45 companies by October last year. While at IIT Kharagpur, only 10 companies have registered for the final placement, down from 38 earlier.

While at IIT Lucknow the registrations have reduced to eight from 25 last year, and of IIT Kanpur has dropped by 48% to 12.

Experts believe that some large companies like Accenture, Wipro and Infosys might be visiting campuses only in March next year thus this can be the reason for the drop in registrations.

As per earlier reports this year, there has been rise in job offers made to students of all the seven IITs, as Indian corporates have started hiring in big numbers supported by the revival of the economy.

Prof PK Jain who is taking care of campus placements at IIT-Roorkee told, “Things are better this year and we even see a 10-20% increase in average salaries”.

This year many public sector companies, especially in the core sector, are showing interest in placements. IITs are expecting big recruiters like Larsen & Toubro, Gas Authority of India, Tata Motors, Oracle, JP Morgan and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), who pick up around 10-15 students, to return this placement season.

Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield-services provider last year gave the highest package of $100,000, is also expected to visit IIT campus.

Adobe Systems, will be recruiting 4-5 graduates from each of the seven IITs, whereas finance companies Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have already given their offers.

HCL will hire 2,000 people in couple of months

After a long pause, almost one year, the companies have started hiring. HCL Technologies Shiv Nadar told his company is planning to hire 2,000 people in the next couple of months.

Recently in US and European market business acquisitions have created additional talent requirement in the company. In order to support its new clients including Energy Future Holdings and Oncor the company will be hiring over 200 people in a few months in Texas.

D K Srivatsava, global, head (HR), HCL Technologies, pointed out, “We are hiring 2,000 people domestically who will support our delivery functions. Some of these new entrants will be freshers while most will be laterals and senior delivery support staff.”

Last year, in spite of global economic crisis HCL remained optimistic, this year also the company will continue hiring throughout the fiscal. Last year it had hired around 15,000 people.

From this year HCL has formulated a bench policy under it will be investing in training, reskilling, deskilling and multi-skilling. Srivatsava explained, “That decision has paid us great dividends”. Earlier five years ago, HCL had started an employee campaign called ‘Directions’ in which every employee was included in the growth and transformation of the company.

Srivatsava told, “When the whole world spoke about ‘customer first’, our motto was and still is ‘employee first and customer second’. We have been promoting collaborative working, inclusiveness, sharing of tools and technologies through ‘Directions’ over the years. This has helped our employees develop lateral thinking and leadership qualities”.

He told after this positive employee campaign the company gained confidence and courage as a result of which company took bold decisions like venturing into mega merger and acquisition (M&A) deals like that with Axon “when the rest of the industry chose to remain conservative.”

Wells Fargo expands its back-end, opens hiring in India

Wells Fargo is on a hiring process in India. The fourth-largest bank in the US by assets is in expanding mode of its back-end business processing unit in India, while most of the multinational banks are slimming down their corresponding units. Steve Ellis, executive vice president, wholesale services group, informed among its global services India is a key international centre therefore bank will continue to strengthen up its operations here.

However over the past few years, some of the foreign financial services firms including Citibank, UBS and Aviva have closed their offices or are in the process of selling off their confined BPOs. Most banks think that such operations have limited saving level whereas outsourcing of work to third party BPOs is more beneficial. But Wells Fargo consider its Indian unit of great value and believe its team in India as an extension of US teams.

Mr Ellis’ is coming to India when the San Franscisco based bank is in the process of completion of its merger with Wachovia Bank in India. Last year Wells Fargo had bought Wachovia’s global assets therefore it was least affected by the global financial crisis. But over the years bank has been criticized for its business practices, customer service and fee levels.

He is an exclusive interaction given to ET said, “As we aim to provide our global lines of businesses with a strong delivery capability around technology and business operations, we feel the need to broaden the scope of our search for talent”. He added, “The talent pool in India has been a key success factor in moving us into the future, and further strengthening our customers’ experience”.

Mr Ellis also informed recently company has recruited from 1 to 50 or more in a month, in its Hyderabad office and at present there are over 800 people in the company spread across technology and business operations.

At present neither Wachovia nor Wells Fargo are carrying out any retail or commercial banking operations in the country, although Wachovia is providing services in global payments, cash management, trade finance, treasury services and other activities. At Wells’ BPO application development and other business processes related activities like financial analysis, financial modeling and service operation are being carried out.

TCS to give promotions but no increments to trainees

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology services provider has announced that this year the around 1,500 trainees who will be joining the company by the end of September, will get promotions, but will not be eligible for increments until they complete their six-month training period.

Up till now the campus recruits used to get an annual package of around Rs 3.2 lakh (around Rs 26,670 per month) of which Rs 60,000 (or Rs 5,000 per month) comprising the increment component. But now the trainees who will be joining the TCS, for the first six months will not be eligible for this component.

Ajoy Mukherjee, Vice President and Head of Global Human Resources informed, “We took this decision from a productivity point of view. While this will result in cost savings, it is more of a mindset change”.

TCS had given offer letters to around 24,885 students. Out of these approximately 18,000-19,000 are expected to join the company in batches by the end of the current financial year. However, after the completion of the training, how many trainees will join will depend on the training capacity of the organization and the business demand environment. The company sources told, even the hiring of laterals (experienced hands) will be on the controlled basis.

The sources clarified that the change in salary structure will not be applicable for the 250 trainees who are being hired by TCS for its Cincinnati centre. Mukherjee informed, “The reason being, there is no variable pay component applicable in the US. We have made campus offers to 160 students, of which 120 have joined the centre”.

However for the next financial year (FY2011), the company will be visiting campuses in January 2011. Mukherjee did not give any details regarding the number of freshers the company plans to hire for FY2011.

Mukherjee informed TCS, will remain on its stand of not giving increments for this financial year. He said, “While the bad news this year is that there will be no increments, we will be promoting over 9,000 employees, which was held over last year”.

Engineering graduates exploring other options from a long-term angle

The engineering students by the time they enter in the final year get selected by the IT and various manufacturing companies and just after passing out of the college they are in lucrative jobs. But recently there has been a change in the usual trend many students especially engineering graduates who had bagged lucrative jobs during the boom years, this year are exploring other options including higher studies abroad.

Although the US economy is still in the middle of a recession, the student’s spirits have not gone low reason being the programs in many universities in the country are esteemed high. According to C Vijayalakshmi of United States-India Educational Foundation (USEFI), “Many graduates are now looking from a long-term angle. They are exploring subjects including specialized disciplines that meet their career options”.

Mala Srinivasan, director (Delhi operation), Indo American Professional Education Network (IAPEN), which gives coaching to students who want to go abroad points out, after the meltdown new fields have been introduced in which in the near future the growth chances are very high. Therefore the students are looking at post-graduate options in emerging fields such as biotechnology, bioinformatics and cloud computing to name a few.

Every year from India nearly 50,000 students take up the GRE (Graduate Record Examination), a qualification for getting admission into post graduate engineering programs in the US.

Anand Kannan, managing director, GreEdge.com offers online coaching to pass the exam says, “Many US universities continue to offer excellent masters and doctoral programs and that is one main draw that lures students abroad”.

According to Open Doors 2008, published annually by the Institute of International Education (IIE) there has been 7% increase in the total foreign enrolment, which touched a record high of 6, 23,805 in 2007-08. In 2007-08 there was 13% increase in the enrolments from India, up to 94,563 students. Moreover most of the students from Asian countries go for further studies to the United States, has increased by 10% this year.

Due to slowdown many US universities have witnessed slouch in donation amounts therefore, this year decline in grants from corporations for scholarship, research and equipment is expected because of slowdown, which means fewer scholarships and aid this year.

According to the Open Doors report around 62% of all international students get their majority of funds from family and personal loans. Thus the contribution received from this segment through tuition and living expenses amounts over $15.5 billion to the US economy.