Trends in the recruitment of Information Technology Professionals is treading into negative territory during the current year in India. This is attributed to the slowdown of the U.S. economy who are the major consumers of I.T. Services and a stronger rupee both of which have resulted in declining earnings for I.T. majors. The worst affected are smaller companies which may go out of business.
This is because the decline is as high as 30 to 60% as compared to last year. As a result of the financial woes the Banking Industry in the U.S. is undergoing due to the sub-prime woes, the Banking and Financial Services clients have reduced their spending on development of new software. I.T. Companies are also involved in exercises to improve their existing utilization ratios from the industry average of 70% to 85%.
The slowdown has many other consequences. The firms are no longer rushing with lucrative campus offers and in fact are looking at postponing the entry dates of the new recruits. There has been an all round decline in advertisements in various medias for recruitments. The increase in pay packets has also got reduced substantially from an earlier estimated level 13% or so to 7% or so. Job hopping is also witnessing a slowdown. This is because no longer the companies would want to buy out the notice period of the employee whom they would like to employ from an existing employer. If they find such a measure is costly or they have to wait for a longer period, they simply go in for an alternate available employee.
The once prevalent evil of no show where in a prospective employee accepts an offer but do not turn out for employment is also on the decline. The employers are no longer lenient towards performance related indicators and the earlier practice of retraining and redeployment is now replaced with pink slips.
The slow down is fraught with severe consequences at least for one sector which is the Real Estate. There has been a skyrocketing in the prices of real estate in metros like Bangalore and Chennai. There was a mushrooming of new projects with developers announcing dime a dozen almost every week. Many may bite the dust.
………..
Leave Your Comments