BANGALORE, INDIA: Dataquest, the flagship publication from the CyberMedia Group, in association with IDC, came up with the list of the top 20 IT employers in India in 2009, which saw the entry of relatively newer and smaller players as the best IT employers in the country.

While HCL Infosystems emerged the topper in the list, last year's topper iGate Global Solutions came second this time. Interestingly there are seven new entrants this year in the top 20 list.

“As expected in a slowdown year, the Top20 list witnessed major upheavals. There are seven new entrants on the list, including emerging companies such as Infogain and R Systems. The entry of a channel company like Ingram Micro was a surprise too. These new players replaced biggies such as Microsoft, TCS, Intel, and Sun that decided to give the survey a miss this time,” the survey said.

The other companies in the top 20 list are: Rolta India, RMSI, SAS Institute India, R Systems (new), Perot Systems (New), Tavant Technologies, Datacraft India, Synechron, Ingram Micro India, (new), Tulip Telecom, Sify Technologies (new), SPAN Infotech India, Hexaware Technologies, Patni Computer Systems, Infogain India (new), Unisys India (new), Novell (new), Virtusa.

The survey comes at a time of uncertainties and volatilities in the IT job market. “In such times, when job losses, salary freezes and maniacal focus on operational excellence has become a norm, the role HR within the organization is undergoing a significant change as well, says the survey.

The survey also finds out the reason why people change their jobs and, as expected, the answer is salary and compensation. Nearly 53 per cent of the employees surveyed said they made job shifts for better salaries. Overseas opportunity, growth opportunity and career development, location and job security are the other major criteria that made people think of job shift.

As per the survey HCL Infosystems is the dream company for most, followed by Perot and iGate. On the other hand, RMSI, HCL Infosystems are the toppers in the list of the preferred employer. More than 80 per cent of the employees here said, “I love it here”.

When it comes to the company image, again HCL Infosystems topped, followed by iGate, RMSI, Rolta. However, the top 20 list of the organizational culture is lead by iGate, followed by RMSI. HCL is pushed to the third position here.

The survey observed that retention became easier during the period. The average retention rates during the year increased to 85 per cent from 79 per cent last year.