Other avenues, please

Excerpts from an article in Deccan Herald : IT biggies on hiring spree; one lakh people to join workforce
New Delhi, Feb 14 (PTI)
Switching over to robust recruitment mode after a dormant 2009, Indian IT players will hire nearly one lakh people in the coming months amid improving global economic conditions.
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. 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. "IT companies usually hire to meet their next 18-month requirement. The actual hiring is always higher than the announced hiring as the companies also do lateral hiring besides fresh recruitments," Chakraborti said. "As economy started improving the IT infrastructure contracts started moving to India. The jobs in IT industry is gaining pace but for us to have a booming 2008 job market will take some (more) time," Info Edge National Head (Marketing and Communications) Sumeet Singh said.

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What I think about it :

EC grads, Computer Science(CS), Information Science(IS), Telecom, Mech, Civil, Instrumentation, Biotech (ok, all the branches of Engineering) guys are all welcome to participate in the recruitment process. After spending four years studying something else, people enter software field. I personally know a mechanical engineer from a premier institute like BITS-Pilani working on S/W projects related to banking, and an MSc-Physics from the same institute developing code. Only about 25pc of the people recruited by the IT(Information Technology) companies are from software background. And let me tell you, most of the NCS (non-Computer Science guys – jargon in the software field) don’t really have a problem working in this field.

Most of the companies train the fresher for about five-six months. In this time you are taught more than a computer science grad studied in four years. And few companies have an extremely rigorous assessment process, which even the CS and IS graduates find difficult to clear. Even if you marginally fall short of the required cut-off mark (say, you have a CGPA of 3.99 and the required grade is 4 on 5), you are given an ‘exit’ (euphemism for being thrown out of the company).

My point here is, if most of the engineering students land up in software field, why study something else for four long years? We have more than a hundred engineering colleges in Karnataka alone offering various branches in engineering, churning out more than 70000 graduates every year. And at present, a lot of people take up courses related to IT at coaching centers, while doing their graduation, to improve job prospects.

I have this concept.

- At present a large amount of resources is diffused over various courses that don’t really produce employable graduates.

- The IT courses do not require as much physical infrastructure as the other branches of engineering do.

- Why can’t we have colleges that teach only IT related subjects instead of all the colleges offering IT courses along with other branches? People interested in jobs in IT industry can straight away join these colleges.

- Consequently, we will have a smaller number of institutes offering NCS courses. The capital thus saved can be directed toward improving the infrastructure and encouraging more research in the NCS institutes. And, a student can focus on his/her field of study alone than studying CS in parallel.

Our media gives us more news related to recruitment in the IT industry; gives a fancy name ‘techie’ to coders; talks big about their lifestyle.( All of this is true) This influences readers/viewers to assume that IT is their/their ward’s ultimate destination. Most of the work in the IT field is service based, and is predominantly dependent on the core subjects. It is high time we concentrate on research and development than take pride in having huge number of programmers in the country and their fat (or, should I say obese?) pay-package.

PostScript: IT guys, no offence intended all right? I’m only trying to say that there are a lot of other avenues to be explored.