The top four IT services companies now employ an aggregate 5.25 lakh professionals, 19 per cent more than the year ago period. To give you an idea of what this size is, consider the Indian Railways: the employee base of these top four IT companies is nearly 40 per cent of the entire headcount of the Indian Railways, which is a 150-year-old organisation, unlike these tech companies, which have essentially been around for the last three to four decades.

HR consultants tracking the IT sector say that good times will continue for software professionals as companies in the top deck hire in large numbers during fiscal 2012.

TCS and Infosys together intend to hire over one lakh professionals on a gross basis this fiscal. Smaller rivals Wipro and HCL have not given a hiring target for coming quarters but HR experts say that, among them, the top-five IT companies could easily hire 1.5-1.7 lakh workers this fiscal.

Mr Sanjay Modi, Managing Director - India/Middle East/South-East Asia, at Monster.com says that the positive outlook on hiring is much in line with Monster's March employment index, which showed that online job opportunities in the sector had jumped 35 per cent on an annualised basis. Another positive indicator is the recent survey by Ma Foi Randstad, which predicts that the sector will add close to 1.83 lakh jobs in 2011.

Challenge for top players

What it means is that software professionals will be clearly spoilt for choice. But the going may be tougher for some employers, as fight for talent at campuses could lead to lower offer-to-joining ratios at hand. Making matters worse, say experts, is the somewhat-fading sheen of top tier tech companies in job market, which in turn may impact their ability to draw the best experienced hires from rival camps.

“For large players, the ability to poach from companies in the peer group or even from those next in the rung, may prove to be difficult as employees may not see much incentive in jumping ship,” says Mr Amitabh Das, Founder & CEO of Vati Consulting, which offers recruitment process outsourcing services to IT companies.

As a result, large employers will have to dive into newer pockets for talent — hiring from smaller companies and smaller cities, adds Mr Das.

Mr E Balaji, MD and CEO, Ma Foi Randstad, feels that hiring from mainstream pool of workers will lead to wage pressures. “Companies will have to pay more to attract and retain quality manpower, which may, in turn, impact profitability,” he says.

That aside, employability issues and shortage of skill sets continue to worry the industry, says Mr Modi from Monster.com. “The biggest challenge for the industry is availability of trained manpower. While the Government is making efforts to bridge the skills gap, it will be some time before the real tangible benefits are felt,” he points out.

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