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Indian IT Sector Scouts for Expatriates to Bridge Skill Gap
SI Team
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Of late, the Indian IT industry has been on a tremendous hiring spree but a majority of them are expatriates. With a growing gap in skills in local talent, it is natural that the industry scouts for talent abroad.

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) had hired Madhu Kannan as the CEO in May last year. The overseas based Kannan was the Managing Director in the corporate strategy group at Bank of America-Merill Lynch. Infosys Technologies has around 100 expats in the middle and senior management levels working in India. In July last year, Wipro hired Martha Bejar to head its global sales and operations.

"Some are hired to fill skill gaps. There is also a lot many who want to work for a world class company that has its base in India. They want to have an India experience in their CV," says T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director and Head of Human Resources and Training at Infosys.
Sanat Kawatkar from Towers Watson has estimated that 25 percent of actuaries in India are from overseas who are paid competent salaries, when compared to the developed markets. "Insurance firms typically hire expats to fill management positions in finance and actuarial services, in which the local talent pool is limited," he says.

"Expats offer Indian companies the 'know-how, the know-who, and the know-what' that they would find difficult, if not impossible, to replicate effectively," says Dipak C. Jain, Dean Emeritus at the Kellogg School of Management.

Just as the US workforce is 'browning' with the addition of foreign talent, so too we see the trend that India is slowly 'creaming' as foreigners increasingly seek opportunities in the world's largest democracy," he says in the Amrop study.
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