After a lull in hiring in the $12.7-billion Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) exports industry, players have again started putting up the ?we are hiring? sign. Even walk-in-interviews organised by hiring consultants are back in fashion. While most companies are looking at hiring in the finance and accounting, banking and insurance verticals, the industry is no more recruiting in droves bucking the trend for the last couple of years.?In the last financial year, the BPO exports industry added around 7.8 lakh people, according to Nasscom estimates.
?A lot of hiring was earlier done to fill in the gaps due to the huge attrition rate, which has gone down drastically in the last one year,? said Amitabh Hajela, vice-president, HR of the Nasdaq-listed ExlService Holdings Inc, which is taking on-board between 100-300 people every month. Hajela added that absorbing of talent from other industries, like retail and airlines, has also stopped.
For instance, the BPO arm of India?s second largest software firm Infosys Technologies, Infosys BPO, plans to hire 3,000 to 3,500 people during the current financial year. K Raghavendra, vice-president and head, HR, Infosys BPO, told FE that though campus recruitments form a majority of its hires, the company has not gone to the campuses this year. ?Depending on how the business situation shapes up, we will be visiting the colleges in the third or the fourth quarter of the year,? he said. Infosys continues to hire at the entry level, which constitutes around 80-85% of its total employee base, and is looking at people with finance and accounting (F&A) capabilities.
On the other hand, the country?s largest BPO player, Genpact, is looking at strengthening its talent capability in specific procurement areas and analytics. While the company is hiring at the entry level in the F&A space, it is ramping up leadership roles at its onsite centres, said Piyush Mehta, senior vice-president, global HR, Genpact.
IBM Daksh, which does not share its employment numbers, is hiring across all sectors that the company operate in. ?It is stronger for segments like BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) and telecom.
