The wheel has turned full circle for the techie who lost his job during the wrenching downturn of the last two years. With the IT industry struggling to find enough qualified candidates to meet growing demand, headhunters are wooing the same employees they laid off during the dark days of the slowdown.
In 2009, the US economy?Indian IT?s bread and butter geography?shrank 2.4%. Global IT spend in the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance vertical which contributes almost 40% of the revenues for major Indian services firms, was lower by 4.6%. This, in turn, led to manpower cuts in those verticals.
However, with the world emerging from the recession, the pendulum is swinging the other way, and retrenched employees are back in demand. ?There are more jobs available today than applications,? says Mohandas Pai, human resources chief of Infosys, India?s second-largest IT services exporter. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies, the IT industry will hire 1,50,000 during 2010-11. TCS and Infosys have announced plans to hire 30,000 and 24,000 respectively this year.
Is there a stigma attached to those who were once shown the door? No, says Pai. Companies recognise that many staffers were asked to go not because they were incompetent, but due to poor business in the verticals they were deployed.
Recalling the layoffs during the downturn, Sanjay Shelvankar, former talent acquisition head of MindTree, says that many IT companies practised passive retrenchment. ?If there was no project in Bangalore, employees there were asked to join a project in Chennai. If refused to relocate, they were asked to leave. They were perfectly billable. These are the employees companies now want to tap,? Shelvankar adds. IT workers? union UNITES claims that over 50,000 workers in the sector lost their jobs during the industry?s dark days, a figure disputed by the IT companies. It is estimated that top-tier firms eliminated up to 15% of their bottom-performers from verticals like banking, R&D services, testing, and BPO. Several head-hunters told FE that with the uptick in IT business, retrenched employees are sitting on multiple job offers. Some of them are offered pay hikes up to 30% more than their last salaries, helping them put their past behind and move on with a smile.
Says Sandipan Saha, an IIM graduate who lost his job during the downturn: ?I had joined a start-up company just before the beginning of the downturn. But the company did not take off as expected and I was retrenched. But now, I have plenty of job offers.? IT companies, expecting an industry growth of 15% this financial year, have been building capacity to meet demand. Many of them have no hang-ups approaching the same employees they once retrenched. The fact that those who once worked with the company can fit into its culture easily works in their favour. These recruits also become billable faster than lateral hires. HR experts say they return to the workplace with a broader outlook, having witnessed the not-so-pleasant side of the IT industry.
Kamal Karanth, managing director at Kelly Services, a staffing company says his firm is open to hiring sacked employees as long as they fit the profile and match the skills or competencies required. Agrees E Balaji, director and CEO, Ma Foi Management Consultants: ?As long as individuals were made redundant due to business reasons, organisations are fine with hiring them back. The issue arises only in cases of people who were terminated for specific reasons. Candidates disclose this (being sacked) during the interview process. There is no reason to hide this now.?
Nevertheless, consultants are being asked by IT firms to pay extra attention to candidates who were laid off. Says Rahul Shah, head of ABC Consultants: ?A lot of discreet checks are carried out on them. But there, they are not discriminated against.? But not everyone is equally fortunate. Employees who had complained about being shunted to the bench or refused to sign the voluntary resignation letters are being blacklisted, said UNITES general secterary Karthik Shekhar. But those who left organisations on a pleasant note have little to worry.