Coming after a forgettable year of hiring freeze, layoffs and salary cuts, the recruitment drive in the IT space is led by biggies such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.

An analysis of the hiring plans announced by various Indian IT companies shows that headcount in the industry is expected to go up by more than 98,000.

According to analysts, increased spending on IT infrastructure and improving overseas markets for outsourcers, are among the main factors for the upbeat hiring prospects.

Diptarup Chakraborti, who is a Principal Research Analyst at global IT research firm Gartner said the industry is back on track with many projects lined up for completion.

“The industry has turned the corner and renewed optimism will bring back recruitment across the globe,” he noted.

Last week, the country’s largest software exporter TCS said it would increase headcount by 30,000 in next fiscal year while Infosys announced plans to hire 16,000 people this year.

Of the 12 companies which have announced their hiring plans, BPO giant Genpact said it would hire 10,000 people. Besides, IBM is looking at recruiting 5,000 followed by Infosys BPO (2,000), Accenture (8,000) and Mphasis (2,000).

Going by Gartner estimates, the domestic IT market is expected to grow by 19-20 per cent in 2010, a sharp rise against a 2.6 per cent growth in 2009.

The size of the offer made to a student from DU is what has made the cheerful difference to the ritual of foreign banks picking up students from Indian institutions, as such handsome offers are the perquisite of IITs and IIMs. The highest that a DU student has got in the past is Rs 14 lakh from Lehman Brothers in 2007.

However, that single spectacular difference has disrupted the private life of Adit, who is desperately staying clear of the media glare. The pleasantly surprised son of Prof Anita Mathur, who also teaches in the same college, has been the first pick of first timer Deutsche from DU. An avid sports enthusiast Adit’s father is the COO of GMR Sports which owns Delhi Daredevils.

“It was completely unexpected. I couldn’t prepare much in advance, but brushing up the basics helped a lot,” Adit told ET. He is flying off to London next July for the Graduate Analyst Training Programme, where he will interact with several other students from across the globe.

Undergrad nets Rs 32 lakh offer from Deutsche Bank

25 Nov 2009, 0705 hrs IST, Mahima Puri & Shreya Biswas, ET Bureau

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NEW DELHI: For someone who aspires for a hole-in-one as an amateur golfer, Adit Mathur has made a Tiger Woodsian debut on the job circuit. Top 10 paymasters
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The 20-year-old undergrad of Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) is now the toast of Delhi University (DU) as he has teed in an offer from Deutsche Bank for an annual compensation package of Rs 32 lakh ($69,000). Mathur, a resident of Civil Lines in Delhi, will be trained in London next year for a plum posting abroad.

The size of the offer made to a student from DU is what has made the cheerful difference to the ritual of foreign banks picking up students from Indian institutions, as such handsome offers are the perquisite of IITs and IIMs. The highest that a DU student has got in the past is Rs 14 lakh from Lehman Brothers in 2007.

However, that single spectacular difference has disrupted the private life of Adit, who is desperately staying clear of the media glare. The pleasantly surprised son of Prof Anita Mathur, who also teaches in the same college, has been the first pick of first timer Deutsche from DU. An avid sports enthusiast Adit’s father is the COO of GMR Sports which owns Delhi Daredevils.

“It was completely unexpected. I couldn’t prepare much in advance, but brushing up the basics helped a lot,” Adit told ET. He is flying off to London next July for the Graduate Analyst Training Programme, where he will interact with several other students from across the globe.

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Deutsche’s routemap to SRCC may have its beginnings in IIMs as the bank, according to Adit, has a feeling for students from the B-school who have moved from the college. He also said the size of the package is quite justified, considering it’s an international location and involves high costs.

So far, SRCC has placed 40 undergrads and 14 post graduate students from its Global Business Operations course. Some 44 companies have already visited SRCC, some of whom are returning after a year’s break. Mazars, a Paris-based audit firm with offices in 77 countries, is also in Delhi for the first time to recruit students and is expected to pick up a few of them.

SRCC is not the only college basking in the hiring glory. Neither is Adit the only student. A student from St Stephen’s College, Sukrit, too has got a similar offer from Deutsche Bank.

The campuses at Kirori Mal College (KMC), Sri Venkateswara College (Venky), Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR) too have been lit up by the happy visits of hiring personnel.

For instance, placement chairpersons at DU colleges say that companies like Google, Deloitte, McKinsey, Bain & Co, YES Bank, HCL, Wipro are regular recruiters. Others like Ernst & Young, KPMG, UBS, Jaypee Group and Infraline are some of the newcomers scouting for talent in DU.

More than a hundred offers by around 15 companies have already been made in Venky, which has also seen the return of Maruti Suzuki. LSR too has got about 200 offers so far, which means it has already found jobs of almost half of the 480 students who will graduate in 2010. The college has seen 40 companies visiting the campus so far, while last year, the figure was lower at 30.

“We have received an average offer of Rs 5.5 lakh, while the highest offer at Rs 9 lakh is from Nomura,” said LSR placement cell chairperson and advisor Arvind Kumar. The Japanese financial services company, too, is returning after a year’s break.

Similarly, Kirori Mal college, where the placement process has just begun, has already witnessed 16 offers with an average package of Rs 5.2 lakh. But the college is hoping for bigger offers in the coming months.

This year, DU has also introduced online registration system for those who desire to be placed. More than 8,000 students have registered with Central Placement Cell (CPC) so far.

This too has happened for the first time showing the way for students like Adit and Sukrit who can have their dream jobs and watch the British Open or a few matches of the English Premier League.

Ashok Reddy, MD of staffing firm TeamLease, says the rise in the stockmarket, the improvement in FII and FDI flows and the improvement in themonsoon situation have positively impacted sentiments in industry. Many employers are now back in touchwith their third party headhunters.

There is also a slight improvement in the recruitment ad space. The active job position numbers in TeamLease too are indicative: the firm used to handle as many as 10,000 active jobs a month before themarket crash last year. By June this year, it had dropped to 800 non-active positions. But now again it is up at 3,500 active positions.

Zubin Shroff,MDof TalentManagement Group, says that a comparison of hiring figures for June and August done by his company on behalf of others shows a 200%increase.

Tier I tech firms TCS, Infosys and Wipro, who had frozen hiring, have started hiring in small numbers. Hiring is also picking up among IBM, HP, Accenture and at Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Hiring for the domestic market seems to be bouncing back faster than in other categories. BPOs are yet to get back to the hiring mode.

The four-day week comes in two flavours. One option is to switch from five 8-hour days to four 10-hour days, meaning overall hours and salaries stay the same.

In August 2008, the state of Utah moved all of its employees, apart from the emergency services, to working 4/10, as it has become known. The hope was that by shutting down buildings for an extra day each week, energy bills would be slashed by up to a fifth.

Researchers Rex Facer and Lori Wadsworth of BYUs Romney Institute of Public Management analysed the potential benefits of Utah government’s four-day work week transition and found that the employees were satisfied with their jobs, and enhanced productivity.

They found that even though four-day work week employees work the same number of hours per week as their traditional work-week counterparts, they reported being more satisfied with their jobs, compensation, and benefits, and were less likely to look for employment elsewhere in the next year.

With the four-day work schedule, employees were less likely to report that they come home too tired, that work takes away from personal interest, and that work takes time they would like to spend with family.

Other studies have linked work-home conflict with low job performance and lessened productivity.

There are going to be very real benefits for employees, specifically decreased gas cost, decreased commute time (both because they only have to commute four days, but also because they will be commuting during off-peak times, so the commute could potentially be shorter each day), and hopefully, improved work-life balance, said Wadsworth.

The second form of the four-day week is to work the same number of hours per day for four days only, with a commensurate 20% pay cut. With the recession hitting revenues, accountancy company KPMG announced in February that it was offering its 11,000 UK employees the option of a fourday week to avoid job losses. So far 85% of employees have applied to join the scheme, and 800 now do a four-day week.