"India opens its arms wide for s/w developers"

"With increase in demand for software developers in India, most of the Indian companies are investing heavily in their IT spending and setting up a whole new infrastructure including hardware and software," feels Sudhanshu Pandit, senior manager, staffing operations, Symantec.

In an interaction with Jasmine Desai from CyberMedia, Pandit talks about the growth opportunities for software developers in India and trend in recruitments being made abroad.

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

Sudhanshu Pandit: When we are hiring entry-level software developers we look for specialization in Computer Science or Engineering or Masters in Computer Applications. While hiring experienced programmers, we look for work experience. Campus recruitment is conducted during a particular season as we hire from top-level institutions like IIT. This year we have recruited 120 fresh graduates. Lateral recruitment is business dependent, so we do not freeze particular figure at the beginning of the year.

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

SP: There are two types of skills: job-specific skills like core computer science programming concepts and technical skills. There are soft skills that we look for at senior level, which demands ability to communicate across different cultures, time-zones, etc. We also offer domain or job-specific training to sharpen various skills of the employee.

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

SP: Nowadays, many companies including ours, offer individual the growth opportunity according to his personal preference. For example, we have technical track for people who do not want to become managers but want to go ahead being a technical person.

CIOL: What is the trend for abroad recruitments?

SP: We are a product company and for most product companies recruiting people for abroad is not a key requirement. This trend is definitely increasing in service companies. These companies hire people in India, provide them with experience and training on certain technologies and then send abroad to customer locations. With our kind of company, people work on cutting-edge technology in India. Later, after 3–4 years, they might go abroad to different company locations and work on the same or different technologies.

CIOL: How is the Indian market for software projects?

SP: The Indian market is growing at a rapid pace. Most of the Indian companies are investing heavily for their IT infrastructure. They are either upgrading it or setting up a whole new infrastructure including hardware and software. Large companies have started taking Indian customers very seriously for doing software business here. BFSI sector seems to be very speedily adopting IT. Compared to past few years, currently people mainly transact online exchanging sensitive information. Owing to this, there is a high demand for security at all levels.

CIOL: What are the policies followed or activities to retain employees, keeping in mind the high attrition rate?

SP: First and foremost we offer very well defined technical tracks. As I said earlier, we hire graduates from IITs. Not many companies offer growth plan in the technology track. As for us, we have well-defined designations, training in this track. We offer unlimited opportunities to our employees to move within product groups in the company. For example, a person can move from a security to storage product or from UNIX to a Windows product etc. Thus, they get exposure to various domains affecting their career in a positive way. Employees can also move to customer centric roles in sales or consulting. We have various rewards and recognition programs, wherein the top-performers are rewarded. We make this happening more frequent to make sure that our benefits are benchmarked against the market. We also have tuition reimbursement policy for employees. Under this, we have a generous provision of reimbursing to an employee Rs 3 lac per year if he/she is pursuing a diploma or a degree. We even reimburse money to employees who need to have certain certification like Java or Cisco Networking.