Indian IT firms look for lateral staff overseas, poach from each other

Indian IT services firms are seeking to hire talent from each other as they plan to add more experienced people locally in the US and other markets.

At a time when companies such as Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and others have ramped up local hiring in the largest market along with Donald Trump’s push for creating more jobs for Americans, firms plan to fill the overseas positions faster.

Out of Infosys’ 150 top-paid executives hired onsite in FY17, more than half were from its rival companies, as reported by The Economic Times. “Infosys poached 12 executives from Cognizant, 13 from Capgemini, five from TCS, and eight each from Wipro, Accenture and IBM in the current financial year. The others were hired from HCL Technologies, Zensar, Tech Mahindra and ITC Infotech,” noted the ET report.

Recently, Infosys announced an ambitious plan to hire more than 10,000 people in the US over the next two years. Pravin Rao, chief operating officer, told analysts that the company would have preferred to hire more experienced staff in the US given an opportunity.

While top five Indian IT services firms have stepped up the hiring of experienced people and freshers from universities in the US, Infosys has estimated a promising number.

Cognizant has reportedly tapped both lateral people and freshers in the US. The company also ramped up number of local people employed through acquisitions. Wipro has added a few hundred people in the US through one of its largest acquisition, Appirio.

“Ideally we would love to have 10,000 experienced people so that we can deploy them immediately and benefit from this. But the reality is, that there is shortage of skill, particularly in the areas of technology. We have taken the approach of hiring experienced people and freshers by making offers to the colleges. We are early in the game as we have already started training our first batch,” Rao told analysts earlier this month.