Kalpana Jaishankar, VP, People Development and HR, Patni talks to Jasmine Desai from CyberMedia, about the growth prospects of software developers in India. While talking about the company's vision, she said, "Our vision is to achieve global IT services leadership in providing value-added high quality IT solutions to our clients in selected horizontal and vertical segments, by combining technology skills, domain expertise, process focus and a commitment to long-term client relationships."

Here's a glimpse of what all she had to say.

CIOL:  What qualifications do you look for while hiring software developers?

Kalpana Jaishankar: Due to scarcity of resources there will be a gradual increase in the number of graduates being recruited. We also recruit non-IT engineers. While they are on their current jobs, we train them during weekends. Later depending on the requirement and how have they performed in the tests after training, recruitment is done. In 2006, we recruited 56 non-IT engineers. In future, recruitment will definitely get more renovated. Lateral recruitment also takes place, which is recruiting people from other software organizations. However, this is done for very specific skills. We rather give chance to people within our organization.

CIOL: What skills do you look for while hiring software developers?

KP: We look at technical skills along with their problem solving and analytical skills. In addition, we also look for communication and interpersonal skills as interpersonal skills become very important at junior level.

CIOL: What is the growth opportunity in India for software developers?

KP: Inspite of the talks of economy slowing down a bit, at present there are many projects and not enough people. This gap will continue for another few years. Future is extremely bright for them in terms of career options they have. Also, software companies are majorly looking into retaining employees and this is a major concern.