BPO hiring gains momentum
May 31, 2010
BPO hiring hasgained momentum After nearly a couple of years’ sluggish employment prospects, the BPO/ITES sector has seen the return of hiring to almost pre-crisis levels.
With orders and projects more or less back on an even keel, it is back to business for most firms. Most of India’s major IT players like Infosys, TCS and HCL have major hiring plans for this financial year. Infosys reportedly plans to hire 30,000 people and it is heard TCS too is looking at a similar figure. HCL Technologies is apparently looking at recruiting 5000 additional hands. With BPO exports touching the $49 billion plus mark this year, the industry feels quite sanguine about its prospects.
There are reports of other majors like Genpact having plans of hiring 9000 to 10000 people this year and with reports of Aegis planning a manpower augmentation of 18000 people, things are looking quite bright on the employment front. The way things are stacked a double digit growth rate for the industry translates to a demand for 1.5 lakh people in the next financial year. The riding out of the storm that the global financial crisis created, only underscores the fact that the outsourcing business has become a fully entrenched part of the global economy. What’s more it has matured to become a responsive and dynamic industry capable of sophisticated adjustments and organic changes.
The way that the industry evolved in light of the crisis, turning adversity into advantage by leveraging economies to businesses under pressure and quickly changing the business and service models in many cases to suit new realities ensured that the industry emerged stronger and better. While hiring is back on track it is yet to scale the 2007 levels. Moreover the salary hikes too have been modest aimed more at retaining talent than anything else. But given the mayhem the market witnessed over the last two years, this is a clear sign of confidence returning, slowly but surely. As time goes by and the global market shows greater strength and moves towards a full recovery there is no doubt that those levels will not only be reached but breached as well. What goes in favor of this happening is the tremendous multiplier effect that each additional job creates.
Right now it is the large cap firms really, that are doing the bulk of the hiring. Once the mid-size companies join in the job prospects are going to get bigger and better. So for all conceivable reasons it is a good time to be a part of the BPO/ITES industry. The pay may still need some climbing to do, but the growth prospects for the industry are tremendous and people employed therein can certainly look forward to good times. The fact that employers have started looking for manager level people with up to 4 years of experience and not focusing on running sweat shops augurs well for both the industry and the employees, and we may finally see a solution to the problem of high attrition and employee burn-out.
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