Crunch forces IT firms to hire highly productive heads
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 30 October 2008, 00:34 IST   |    2 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
Bangalore: At a time when lay-offs are at their peaks, some Indian human resource companies who provide talent to the IT/ITES companies says that the global economic crisis will not lead to unemployment, but it will definitely force employers to demand highly productive people instead of blindly hiring in bulks, reports CXO today. "The situation is not as bad as is being reflected. IT/ITES is still hiring. Companies like Quatrro, Infosys and other bigger players have not stopped employing people," says Pankaj Bansal, CEO and chairman, People Strong, an HR solutions provider. But now there is a change in demand. Employers are ready to hire people, but are demanding higher level of productivity. There is still a lot of demand for software engineers for coding assignments, but the need for managerial posts has declined. Said Bansal, "People are still switching jobs. There is still a demand for people at higher level to tide competition. At that level, there is no compromise on packages, but the average hike otherwise is between five and ten per cent. And because of the correction, the attrition has declined. The market is now differentiating between quantity and quality." Infact, S.V. Krishnan, HR head for software firm Satyam, said that the company will not cut its hiring targets. "This year we plan to recruit 12,000-15,000 people, and we are well on target to achieve that. We may however, postpone some new recruitments for the next quarter." According to Basant Shroff, associate director, Advisory Services for Ernst & Young, it is difficult to say that employees are being laid-off to cut costs. "People play a significant role in the software and the IT services area. Actually, it is difficult to arrive at an exact figure currently as there is no reliable statistics available." Recently, a survey by HR consulting firm Manpower had said that India's IT and ITES sectors planned to continue hiring in the fourth quarter of the calendar year 2008. At the same time a report in economic times says that employees with IT firms are increasingly spooked by fear of layoffs as demand for IT services slows down. Rumors of layoffs among employees and repeated management clarifications are becoming a regular feature at some of the country’s top IT firms, it adds.

siliconindia