BANGALORE, INDIA: Everyone has this one question on lips: What will be the impact of the US economic crisis on Indian IT companies and more importantly on jobs? BFSI is already seeing so many layoffs, will IT also follow suit? We take a look at the present Indian IT scenario and the hiring plans of Indian software companies for the immediate future. But more importantly we dwell on what job seekers should do to make the most of this scenario

Citigroup laying off 50,000 employees. PepsiCo retrenching its manpower by 14,000. Scary stuff! In this age of global slowdown, professionals across all industries suffer night pangs, fearing the proverbial pink slip on the morrow. Such fear is not new for IT professionals, as the 2001's dotcom bust is still fresh in memory. Even during this recession, most surveys suggest that there won't be too many job positions opening up in the coming year. So, while the US has already caught a severe cold, how can Indian IT companies not even sneeze!

Should you panic?
NASSCOM subscribes to the theory of job cuts, however, and surprisingly indeed, the Big 4 of the Indian IT industry have gone on record to announce their hiring plans for 2009. Infosys has announced that it will be sticking to its original plan of hiring 25,000 new people for the coming fiscal. TCS has already made around 25,000 technical campuses offers for the year 2009-10, which interestingly is 13 percent more than this year.

Satyam too will be hiring 8000 to 10,000 people for the coming fiscal. Wipro has made offers to about 10,000 fresh-graduates and plans to do a 6000 lateral hiring of people. Campus hiring from premier institutes is already over with most students securing decent job offers. All this sounds rosy for IT professionals as far as job openings are concerned. However, there's still cause for concern. NASSCOM has predicted that there is likely to be a significant impact of the global crisis on the Indian BPOs.

India might see a reduction in software exports and outsourcing projects. But, despite the general economic slowdown, India's IT and ITeS industry would continue to log in 21-24 per cent growth this year, and would remain competitive in the global market. Software Cos and BPOs would continue to grow, though not at the pace they have been used to during the last few years.

The slowdown will pass on in a year's time. This coming year could be a major opportunity for many IT companies to acquire new clients. How much has the global economic slowdown impacted the Indian IT industry? Current statistics from the Big 4 Indian IT companies actually indicate that they have good revenue traction along with headcount additions in the past quarter. But the fact remains that growth in the immediate future would be muted in terms of revenue and headcount as compared to past rates. This is only natural given the coming recession across many parts of the Western World. However, I believe that this situation too like everything else shall pass in a year's time. This coming year could also be a major opportunity for many IT companies to acquire new clients. The reason is that a slowdown would necessitate cost savings for companies in the Western recessionary world. This would in the medium term of one year, open up opportunities for Indian IT companies to pitch their services to offer cost optimization. Many companies would also need to re-look at the way they do business. This may also help Indian IT companies to get a toehold into new clients. The other opportunity that the slowdown may throw up is for Indian IT companies to acquire companies abroad and in India at very reasonable valuations. I also see a trend of consolidation in the IT industry. Only the largest and fittest would survive in the long term. I see a trend of mergers and acquisitions in the medium term where some of the small and mid-sized IT companies get acquired by the larger players. Avinash Pai, Director- Finance, Empower Research Services What would be your advice to IT professionals during this slowdown and how can they safeguard their jobs? I would like to think that things are made out to be much worse than they appear from a medium term perspective. I do believe that there may be short term losers especially in the BFSI verticals, but I do believe that diversified IT companies have so many opportunities that they would end up redeploying most of their employees with other verticals. My advice to IT employees would be to continuously learn new skills, languages, platforms etc. This would ensure that if there is a downturn in one sector of the economy, the employees are well prepared to enter another sector because of their new skills. To sum it up continuous learning is a must at all levels.