The Hindu Business Line : IT sector: Language skills in keen demand

IT started as an early initiative into language skills by companies such as Wipro, Infosys and Satyam with the induction of professionals knowing Japanese language about four summers ago. It has now taken an interesting turn with demand for such professionals in other languages, particularly German and French, going up.

However, tech firms and recruiters maintain that there is shortage of skilled manpower in this space both for trainers as also entry-level job prospects. With BPO (business process outsourcing) on the upswing and with companies providing global support from Indian operations, the demand for foreign language skills has outstripped the availability, constraining the growth of some of the companies, according to experts.

According to Mr R. Chandrasekaran, Managing Director, Cognizant, "As a global company, Cognizant regularly trains its professionals in languages such as French, German, Italian and Japanese. This training helps our professionals understand the business requirements of the customers better and also in their day-to-day living in non-English speaking countries where they get deployed on assignments."

For instance, Symphony Services recently advertised "Wanted Linguists" assuring comparable work environment. The company maintains, if you can speak, read and write Spanish, French, Italian or German you need not look for outside the country for a career. "Cognizant has also acquired companies which has provided it a good pool of non-English speaking professionals. The acquisition of UnitedHealthcare in Ireland brought about 70 Irish-speaking professionals and the recent acquisition of Infopulse brought about 45 Dutch-speaking professionals. These natives with local language capability help us in getting more business. For example, the Infopulse acquisition would help us penetrate the Benelux region better with that additional local language expertise," Mr Chandrasekaran said.

Wipro and Satyam were early initiators to create separate language training facilities to train techies in Japanese. Traditionally, the Japanese business demanded this kind of expertise. Focus has changed to European countries and gradually this could well be to some Asian countries.

The Chief Executive Officer of TVA Infotech, a recruitment facilitating company, Mr Gautham Sinha, said, "This sudden demand supply mismatch is due to increased intake by BPO firms to serve their European clients. Though there are institutions offering language training across the country, the output is lower than demand. IT trainers have begun to address this lately. There is time lag and this will take a while to even out."