It is the best of the times. It is the worst of the times. This is how Santanu Paul, Chief Executive Officer of human resource training firm Talent Sprint, described the prospects for jobs in the information technology and IT-enabled services industry in 2013.
The prospects for high-end, niche skills look very bright. But for general purpose skills, the new year will have little to offer.
Those with specialty skills such as analytics, mobile computing and cloud computing are going to be in great demand, he says.
The bad news is that this is a low volume market. Those who are aiming at mass market jobs will face a lot of problems. With the industry likely to miss the Nasscom’s growth forecast of 11-14 per cent for 2012-13, job watchers say the situation looks not so great for 2013.
Most companies are expected to end up with a growth of 11 per cent or below. This is likely to result in a jobless growth. Assocham had said that jobs had declined by 21 per cent in 2012 (5.3 lakh), with the second half more sluggish, with just 2.4 lakh jobs.
The over-supply and poor quality of output from engineering colleges will further worsen the situation. For instance, Andhra Pradesh, one of the biggest centres for IT and ITES recruitments, witnessed an awkward situation last year, when all the 2.7 lakh candidates who appeared for the common entrance test for engineering and medical colleges secured seats whether they cleared the test or not. This was because the number of seats on offer was 3.3 lakh!
In this situation, the industry is looking at increasing utility rates (the number of people actually put on project work) and efficiency levels. “It is going to be jobless growth next year. And not a good year to pass out,” said Paul.
Companies such as Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra have already announced that they will only go for need-based recruitment.
Though the overall industry presents a not-so-encouraging picture, specialised segments in IT-enabled services such as knowledge process outsourcing are showing signs of hope. “The leads we are getting indicate that the next five months are very bright for the ITES segment,” according to Madhubala Vaidyanathan, General Manager (in charge of services), TeamLease Services, said.