Campus recruitment: MindTree into austerity mode

BANGALORE, INDIA: Of course, this not a very good news for the newbies in software industry. Falling in line with the industry trend, MindTree, a mid-sized software company which completed 10 years recently, has taken a hard decision to go soft on campus recruitments.

S Janakiraman, president & CEO, product engineering services, MindTree, says: "Last year we hired around 750-850 techies through campus placements. This year also we will be recruiting from campuses; however, we are more cautious this time around."

Janakiraman sees the Indian software market making a comeback. "Semiconductor industry, which has been one of our main focus areas, has undergone worst times. However, the worst-hit sectors are also making a faster recovery. The bad times are over with existing customers at MindTree and we see newer customer acquisitions happening today," he added.

MindTree, which recently bagged an outsourcing contract from China’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies, sees many more such opportunities coming sometime from now.

"We have already started addressing Chinese market. Language is a huge barrier over there, but they are overcoming it very quickly. We will be opening a sales office in the initial phase with around 30-40 people in China from sometime now," Added Janakiraman. “Volume of work will happen in India and China, whereas, critical services will continue to happen at near-shore locations.”

On a positive note, he added that MindTree hasn't yet gone into a salary cut mode, though the company has slashed variable pay in the R&D centre. He also added that earlier the variables were calculated according to company parameters, however, today they are being calculated keeping in mind individual parameters too.