The Hindu Business Line : IT'll be 1-million strong quite soon

THE total number of software professionals working in the IT sector in the country, now close to about 900,000, is poised to cross the magical one-million mark during the year, thereby providing direct and indirect employment to about five million people.

With big time recruitment by domestic majors in the IT services - - TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam and by transnationals such as IBM, Oracle and Intel — and with similar growth rates projected in business process outsourcing, India could possibly hit the mark much earlier than projected.

According to Dr Kiran Karnik, President of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, the country is adding about 120,000 professionals per year at an average and "going by the demand and supply related issues, we could actually fall short by the year 2009, as brought out by a human resource study.".Answering queries from Business Line, Dr Karnik stated that the IT sector was expected to employ close to 2.2 million people by 2008, of which the ITES-BPO segment will employ over 1.1 million people in terms of direct employment by 2008.

"The human resources challenges, including attracting and retaining employees are critical determinants of success for this industry in the process of growth.

As the IT industry moves beyond tapping the talent in the best campuses to recruiting large numbers from second and third-rung institutes, ensuring consistency in quality of people being recruited becomes vital.

Urgent steps are needed to upgrade the physical and intellectual infrastructure of colleges along with the syllabi. Introduction of courses in international accounting practices and standards (including US GAAP) for commerce students would greatly enhance the pool of readily-employable talent," he said.

"Good language skills, particularly English, but potentially also in Spanish, French, German and Japanese, is one of the requirements of the booming ITES sector and one of the opportunities for the education system, including private training institutions. So far, this industry has been concentrated in the metros. Its long-term growth, however, depends upon moving large parts of its operations to smaller cities. One of the major challenges is to find enough people with good language skills in these cities. This is potentially a major problem for the industry."

While talent retention is a challenge for companies in boom times, the attrition rate for the industry as whole has been low. Even so, this will continue to be a challenge at both levels — for the individual company and for the industry, he stated.

Moreover, as the focus of the work moves from mere code-writing to consulting, problem-definition, system integration and project management, there is need for adding other capabilities to the repertoire of technical skills. The development of such soft skills must become a priority for IT companies.

Dr Karnik felt with industry dynamics changing and the corporate work culture undergoing transformation globally, attracting and retaining the right talent has become significant for industries across the globe, and more so for the IT sector.

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