Indian IT companies halt lateral hiring

BANGALORE: In the surest sign of a slowing economy, the technology sector, which is the largest employer of skilled workforce in the country, is putting off hiring people with experience. 

 

While campus recruitment for entry-level jobs is still on, lateral tech hiring seems to have come to a near halt with many IT firms giving fresh instructions to third party hirers to put hiring on "slow" , "mute" or "halt" mode. 

A huge bench ( employees without work due to lack of new projects) is mainly responsible for this state of affairs. Other factors that are directly contributing to the scenario are: a stressed pipeline (lack of new orders), distance between projects, continuing troubles in the banking and financial services (BFSI) space and the antioutsourcing sentiments in the US accentuated by it being the election year. 

The trend is likely to continue till the US elections are over later in the year, though there could be a mild recovery expected in the job market by September. C Mahalingam, HR head, Symphony says, companies want to ensure that contracts and customer commitments are in place before any further hiring. So they are extremely cautious about hiring . 

"Depending on the nature of talent, the status of hiring varies. For instance most of the hiring in the lateral space is almost brought to a halt, while specialized talent like IT architect, functional specialists , tech leaders, network specialists are still being hired, though the status is considerably slowed down or muted," said Mahalingham. 

However, tech firms like HCL, Infosys, Wipro, TCS etc are actively hiring in the US market. "Companies are under pressure to hire in the customer markets, due to business and strategic reasons ," say country head of a leading MNC. 

Saurabh Govil, senior vice president, Wipro says, "We are hiring in India, but very cautiously and only need-based. But we are aggressively hiring in the customer markets, in the US and Europe." 

Nirupama VG, MD, AdAstra , says that IT hiring which started declining from April onwards, by mid-May had almost halved. "Requirement has drastically reduced across multiple spaces, more so in the BFSI space," she adds. 

"Some 30% of the job market decline can be attributed to the US elections while quite a bit of the rest can be attributed to completely frozen BFSI space. The space brings almost 40% of revenues to the Indian tech sector. Bank of America alone had cut over 30,000 jobs," says Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO, HeadHunters. 

VIA:[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com]