There is some good news for those looking for jobs in the IT sector. A survey done by Experis IT Manpower Group across the country found that IT companies will be hiring handsomely over the next two quarters. The openings in the IT industry are mainly for pre-trained professionals because now companies do not want to waste their resources on recruiting unskilled graduates and train them. Most of the IT companies told surveyors that they want to hire trained freshers, although there are a number of jobs for experience holders of 1 to 2 years. Therefore, fresh graduates as well as experience holders in the IT sector should expect a good year ahead.
The IT sector of India was facing a slowdown over the last two years; this was partly due to the tough competition that India is facing in low skilled IT jobs from the countries in Southeast Asia like the Philippines. The Philippines, with its large English speaking population, is giving tough competition to Indian IT and BPO sectors. But the real reason behind slashing employees lies somewhere else.
Major IT companies of India hired handsomely in the last decade even when they didn’t have a need for employees. This was being done due to following reasons:
– The government was giving tax breaks to these companies for hiring.
– The bench strength helped them in getting lucrative projects abroad as well as in the country.
– To prepare for future projects.
These people, while officially employed by the company have actually nothing to do, so they were being trained through online courses while some of them were even pursuing their Masters. Another reason behind the hiring ‘boom and burst’ was that most of the graduates hired were unskilled, and companies hired these graduates just to reach the target set by the government to get tax breaks.
While India has and will continue to be affected by the protectionist environment in the West, problems and lack of jobs in the Indian IT sector are only of a short term nature. Economist Manish Sabharwal said, “The industries at any place create an ecosystem which is hard to replace. Therefore as it is hard to replace China as manufacturing hub, similarly it is hard to replace India IT hub because you cannot hire hundreds of programmers in a hour anywhere in the world except Bangalore.”
India’s ‘ease of doing business’ rank is improving, thanks to economic reforms of the PM Modi government such as GST and (IBC). The improved business environment is helping the companies to move to very niche areas such as AI, robotics, block chain etc. Manmeet Singh, President of ManpowerGroup India said “Our research findings clearly indicate the intention toward recruiting millennials for the new age technology disruption that the world is seeing today. With the rapid pace of technology adoption, organizations need pre-trained agile workforce that is productive from day one. There remains a significant skill gap between the desired and the actual hands-on IT professionals, lack of available skill sets being the major roadblock”.
With an improved business environment and a bullish approach to the changing ecosystem, India is expected to remain the IT leader of the world in the coming decades.