The Hindu Business Line : IT cos in ‘pick and choose’ mood

Bangalore, Feb. 27 Leading IT companies that went on a campus hiring binge in 2007 are now left holding the baby. Sources in the recruitment industry told Business Line that all leading IT services companies have now delayed deployment of campus hires on projects by a ‘few months.’ “At least 20-25 per cent of the campus recruits of ’07 batch have been benched and are waiting to be deployed on projects,” says Mr Rishi Das, CEO, Campus Connect, a company that helps build relationships between tech schools and IT firms for recruitment purposes.

IT firms, however, explain than the reason for delayed deployment could be because of different cycle times for different batches of new recruits.

Mr Puneet Jetli, Vice-President and Head, People Function, MindTree Consulting, classifies campus recruits into two categories: those that get assigned to projects and those that become billable. He says generally the cycle time from joining to getting billable is between 30-90 days. “This year, MindTree has recruited two large batches of people (about 1,050 students in all) which is the reason there is pressure to put them on projects. There is no business reason for non-deployment of talent,” he explains.

Dr Pallab Bandyopadhyay, Chief People Officer, Cambridge Solutions, says the recruitment-training-deployment cycle time is around nine months at Cambridge. “The reason for such a long deployment time is because there is a huge skill gap between what the engineering colleges impart and what we need and we have to fill this.”

IT companies generally follow the pyramid style in recruitment, with about 60-65 per cent of its headcount growth contributed by campus hires. Mr Rishi Das says that joining rates in colleges will rise this year, as students, gripped by the fear of recession, will grab offers. Normally, joining or acceptance rate in the previous years was around 70 per cent, which could go up to 85 per cent this year, he estimates.

Though none of the companies has yet considered revising their ’09 hiring numbers, there could be a massive drive to hire graduates. “This would be for lower salaries and it would be at the expense of hiring engineers.”

Mr Anjan Dutta, Vice-President, Staffing, HR, Cambridge Solutions, says that not only hiring of juniors is getting reduced across the industry now, but IT companies are also getting more ‘choosy about the kind of talent’ they are hiring. “There would be stringent assessments to select the best talent,” he says.

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