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BPO is IT says NASSCOM
The
Hindustan Times, June 16, 2002
Despite the dotcom
bust, the infotech industry, surprisingly, is still hiring – in
droves. In the coming year alone, more than a lakh will join the
payrolls of various IT firms. And though the opportunities will
exist mostly in the IT enabled services (BPO) sector
- which is mainly call centers and medical transcription –
there is also promise in higher-level software development and
services.
NASSCOM says that
the current year will see 1,02,750 new jobs overall in the IT sector
– higher than last year’s 92,136 new recruits. Around 44,000 new
jobs will come from the BPO sector, a jump of about 8,000 jobs from
the previous year. These include business processes such as call
centers, medical transcription, bank transcription processing (like
processing chequebook request), data processing, global information
systems (GIS), data digitization and on-line education.
“The demand for
BPO professionals will be the highest across the IT sectors. And
the next will be IT services,” says Sangeeta Gupta, Vice-President of
NASSCOM.
Recruitment to call
centers will dominate the BPO sector, and this requires a mainly
English-speaking workforce. Apart from the call center jobs, then
banking and telecom sectors will create the most jobs this year.
The downside is
that pay packets will be lower compared to salaries that were
offered in 2000.
Nonetheless, it
appears that a lot of recruitment is on the horizon, what with
companies like GE Capital, American Express and Citibank planning to
invest a cumulative US $ 235 million in their ‘back office’
operations in India.
“Multinational
companies are relocating their engineering pool, which has created
job opportunities in the high-end of the IT jobs,” says Gautam
Sinha, the chief executive officer of Bangalore-based TVA Infotech,
which recruits for 40 infotech companies, including Oracle. “A
person with three to 10 years of experience in software services or
products will have good opportunities this year.”
“With a 30 per
cent growth rate, the job market will be driven by the big and
medium level companies. But it still won’t not be the boom of two
years ago,” says Umesh Vyas, Vice-President QAI. He adds that IT
outsourcing will be the key driver this fiscal year.
In the software
exports sector, an upswing is expected. This would mean a comeback,
considering the setbacks suffered in 2001, when the recruitment
dropped to 8,000 after a high 52,000 jobs in 2000. In the current
year recruitment is expected to rise to around 20,000 and would
contribute it a total number of 1,70,000 employees in this sector.
One segment is set
to see a decline in jobs offered. The captive user segment, which
entails software creation by organisations for their internal use,
is forecast to suffer a setback. While around 46,000 software
professionals were hired in 2001, the requirement this year will
hover around 25,500, as the segment is considered by analysis to be
a saturated market.
In
the domestic software sector, however, there will be opportunities for only a modest 3,000 personnel.
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