Indian IT: 3 things that may hit hiring

In under two years, 23-year-old Laveen Bakshi has experienced a wide range of emotions in his stillborn career in information technology. For the electronics and communications engineer The Maharaja Suratmal Institute of Technology, Delhi, the initial thrill of getting an offer letter HCL Technologies, India's number four software exporter, has now given way to dejection, desperation and anger after a near two-year wait for a joining date. 

At least 6,000 others are in the middle of such frustrating waits to join HCL and other IT companies. Once a magnet for skilled manpower, especially engineers, IT companies are now hiring less the sector hired 200,000 people last year, 50,000 less than the previous 12 months, according to industry body Nasscom. 

A global slowdown and a slow-to-change local industry have crimped hiring, and with it, the aspirational tag long enjoyed by this sector. "A feeling of disgust has replaced our previous feeling of pride," says Bakshi. Having waited for months for a joining date, he has also discovered that hiring plans for the 2013 batch are afoot; and as a graduate the previous year, he's out in the cold. HCL TechnologiesBSE -0.25 % didn't make its executives available for an interview, despite repeated requests. 

Over the past two decades, the IT industry has been billed as an employer of choice, on account of handsome salary packages, perks such as stock options and the opportunity to work at client sites worldwide. 

The sector has also been a marker on other HR fronts: it has led in terms of training its employees to be industry-ready (Infosys invests Rs 2.5 lakh and 16 weeks in classroom sessions per employee), scientifically planned career development programmes and was the most aggressive user of stock options to create employee wealth. 

Infosys, for example, has distributed over Rs 50,000 crore in ESOPs over the past 15 years. "Last decade, 25% ofjobs created in India were in IT and BPO," says Pramod Bhasin, non-executive vice-chairman of BPO firm Genpact and past chairman of Nasscom. However, them has now begun to fade. 

Losing numbers

Deepak Mittal spent seven years working with outsourcing companies such as L&T Infotech, Cognizant and Capgemini before moving to a medical devices maker as a business analyst. "In this time, the IT industry has gone focusing on technologies to focusing on verticals," he says. 

While they managed to focus on clients in sectors such as financial services or manufacturing, they did so at a cost employees who had specific technical skills such as Mittal, in enterprise resource planning, now found themselves sidelined. "Sales folk now focused on broad contracts with clients and not employee skills...if your skill wasn't required for a big contract, you found yourself out in the cold," he claims. 

Companies that were previously brushed aside by engineers in the quest for a coveted IT job are clearly sensing this shift. "IT is no longer the most attractive sector for jobs," says Raja Radhakrishnan, head-HR for ABB India, a power gear maker. As the interest in IT wanes, companies such as ABB are discovering that top candidates are increasingly opting for careers in their chosen specialty (electrical and electronic engineering with ABB), rather than punting on a role in an IT company. 

Another HR head, Jacob Jacob of Apollo Hospitals, says healthcare may replace IT as the hiring sunrise industry over the next five to seven years. "There is a huge demand for healthcare across the country and the impact is more immediate and impactful if you work in this sector," he says. 

Making such a shift won't be easy for the large number of code writers in the IT industry. "It is easier for sales and management executives to switch between sectors," says Anish Singh, CEO of Techbridge Networks, a recruitment solutions provider in Bangalore. "But for the hundreds of thousands of programmers who constitute the core of the IT sector, there is very little choice." 

Changing profile

This decline in their careers is dragging down their social standing too. For example, marriage bureaus and websites are reporting decreased interest in profiles of IT workers, especially those with shaky visa statuses or residency permits stuck in red tape. 

"There has been a significant decrease in the premium accorded to profiles of NRIs and onsite workers in the IT sector," says Muragavel Janakiraman, CEO of Bharatmatrimony. com, a popular marriage portal. Holding an IT job is increasingly viewed with the same lens as jobs in other organised sectors, he adds. 

Lalitha Iyer is now facing up to some of these changes. Her son Vishnu, 30, has gone matrimonial goldmine to pariah in 18 months. In early-2011, he went to Germany on an onsite contract. Before his departure, she swatted away piles of potential matches. Now, he's back his stint, had his H-1B visa application rejected for a US trip. His salary hike too is frozen. "We're not getting any younger to keep supporting him emotionally," Iyer says in her small house in North Bangalore. 

HR consultants too are sensing this shift. "The freshness associated with an IT sector job has waned," says Ajit Isaac, founder of Ikya Human Capital Solutions in Bangalore. "Altered tax norms have made ESOPs less attractive and increased disposable incomes have made overseas trips personally more affordable." 

As salaries are also slow to grow (seet), the IT industry's lucre only fades further. "Those days of IT-BPO industry hiring everybody and anybody in college are over," admits Bhasin. As the industry tightens its belt and employment opportunities decline, the rush to net an IT job has slowed. 

However, not everyone thinks that this holds true. "Which other industry hires freshers for Rs 2.5-3 lakh per year," asks R Elango, HR chief for MphasiS, a HP-owned outsourcer. "We have become a lot more discerning with our hiring...we yet get 300,000-500,000 unsolicited CVs a year." The industry is no longer a mass hirer of technical talent masses of ordinary engineers won't be hired. "The demand and quality equations have irrevocably changed," he says. 

New normal

This is the IT sector's third stumble in two decades, each of which has caused significant job losses. First was the slowdown the dotcom meltdown in 2001, then the Lehman-led dive in 2008, and now the battering a persistent global slowdown. This time, the sector is not just re-inventing itself, it is reshaping into a leaner industry. Rather than streets lined with gold, techies have discovered a more brutal reality. 

Deepak John, 30, switched jobs five times in the past decade in the quest for better pay and perks. Now, some of them of the chase is wearing thin. He has rotated through stints in sales and marketing besides being a pure coder. Today, few options are at hand for this electrical engineer, who thought he had it all. "I haven't been abroad in 18 months and two projects have been cancelled," he says. 

The new normal that current and future IT job holders is taking many forms. For example, enrolments at institutes such as NIIT, which supply a raft of technology manpower to companies, are feeling the full force of this rethink. NIIT's flagship IT course, the three-year GNIIT, which enrolled about 70,000 students a year till 2010, now has 50,000 students. "In the next three years, our non-IT revenue will be 30% of the total double of what it is today," says Vijay K Thadani, CEO of NIIT. 

Nitin Pujari, head of department, computer sciences, PES Institute of Technology, says "during the dotcom-led slowdown, students panicked because everyone wanted to jump into IT. This is no longer the case. Students are smarter and more aggressive...other industries, government service and entrepreneurship arestrong alternatives." 

Prashasthi Prabhakar, a fourth semester computer sciences student, has seen her interest in joining the struggling outsourcing bandwagon dim. Instead of a seemingly cushy job with an outsourcer, she wants to try the UPSC ( Public Service Commission) exam, a gateway to a government job. "I'd rather use my engineering skills to improve public service delivery," she says.

Mittal the engineer with the medical devices firm thinks that networking both online and offline has also put a spanner in the works. "When I started in IT, you were just happy to land a job," he explains. "However, now the industry has grown and people know its benefits and ills in equal measure." People with a job offer in the tech sector now do their own reference checks and aren't averse to walking away a company or the entire industry if they feel that its aspirational value is headed south. 

All this networking, however, came to naught for 23-year-old Dev Chatterjee, who first found himself benched and three months later fired his job with a mid-sized software exporter. After many attempts, he found a job as a part-time Java developer with a startup real estate portal. 

Several people had vetted his previous employment choice, but his career unravelled when a client killed an outsourcing deal. "Now, I will never recommend this sector to anyone," he says. 

In these tough times, it's unlikely he'll get too much sympathy. "Employees must realise that jobs will get automated and they have to stay ahead of the curve. The calibre of people that the industry is looking at is going up," says former Genpact chief Bhasin. "Companies don't need that many trained engineers to run an IT help desk... work will not go away, but fewer people will be needed."