India might have lost the opportunity to grab the local US jobs because of protectionism issues but the Asia Pacific region, which is recovering faster than the US, has diverse jobs on offer for Indian professionals.
Indian business schools are facing high demand for their students from Apac countries as multinational companies (MNCs) and Indian firms are looking at hiring new talent in this region. Even top and mid-level management of large enterprises is immigrating to these regions from India.
Ma Foi Randstad director & president E Balaji said, ?Though all the Apac economies are growing slower than India, this year they have started hiring aggressively. There has been 15% rise in overall demand of professionals from India against 2009.?
IIM Lucknow placements head Bharat Bhasker said, ?Last year, IIM Lucknow placed twice the number of its students in Apac compared to the western region comprising the US and Europe.?
University of Delhi?s Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), too, has seen the same trend backed by revived growth of MNCs in emerging geographies. ?In the last few years FMS has seen more offers from Apac region compared to US, simply because a number of our recruiters such as P&G, Standard Chartered and Citibank have their Apac headquarters in Singapore, where a number of our students have been placed over the years,? adds Neha Bhargava, joint secretary, media relations, FMS.
In the broader picture, Balaji from Ma Foi feels that the three main countries that are hiring now in the Apac region are Malaysia for the oil and gas sector, Singapore in banking and financial services, and Thailand for automobiles. Even software companies and investment banks are not behind, he notes. On similar lines, Delhi-based Indian Institute of Foreign Trade says firms from the West Asia and Singapore have turned out to be the biggest recruiters over the last few years. ?IT companies like Infosys and Patni usually hire domestically and then transfer the students to other locations after training. Besides these, our students are also placed in Africa and Malaysia also,? explains Munish Bhargava, placement and corporate advisor, IIFT.
Dhirendra Shantilal, Senior vice president, Asia Pacific at Kelly services, a human resource firm explains that hiring by MNCs in Asia pacific region, at mid level and senior level has also increased by 15 to 20% in 2010, as compared to last year.
Shantilal said the mid-level management also finds very difficult to get the US and Europe visas because of strict immigration laws On the other hand, countries like Australia, Malaysia and Singapore have liberal laws for professionals which are immigrating.
Jyorden T Misra, founder member and MD, Spearhead Intersearch analysis another reason for less demand from the US, ?The Indian and Chinese students are neck to neck competing for the US jobs. Thus, a share of the jobs in specific sectors like software tend to go to China as well,? he says.
Bhasker said till a few years back, the institute placed 20% of its students in US and now, that is less than 5%. ?There is a shift in the placements with the Apac region seeing an increased number of students compared to the US because Apac is growing faster than other economies,? he says.