Indian IT firms go to US campuses to hire local US talent

Bangalore: After years of hiring experienced professionals to serve top customers in the US, Indian tech firms are now seeking to hire fresh engineering graduates from American universities, as stricter immigration norms and high unemployment rate make local hiring attractive in the country.

In a year when India’s top outsourcing firms are under pressure to position themselves as more global companies not necessarily responsible for America’s ‘jobless economic recovery’, experts and company officials say a war for local US talent is set to become a priority.

Apart from stricter and costlier visa permits in the US, outsourcing customers such as GE are also asking Indian vendors to play a role in addressing high unemployment rates.

India-based tech firms including Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services , Infosys and Cognizant are now battling it out to hire hundreds of fresh engineering graduates from campuses of Pennsylvania State University , Rutgers, University of Massachusetts , University of Connecticut , North Carolina State University and University of Michigan , among many others.

Companies such as Infosys, which counts JP Morgan among its top customers, say they have started hiring from US campuses.

“We have a target of hiring 250 local employees every quarter in the US for the next four quarters,” said S Gopalakrishnan,

CEO of Infosys. “As we develop our consulting and systems integration services, we need to hire more at all levels in the United States. Brand recall for companies like ours is improving every year, we are slowly getting there,” he said.

US talent pool much smaller

“There is no big cost difference because we have to pay American salaries even to our Indian employees going there,” he added.

However, unlike India, which produces nearly 600,000 engineering graduates every year, the US pool is much smaller, ensuring a much more intense fight for whatever talent is available.

“Though IT is a popular choice, compared to Indian colleges, the pool of students looking out for a career in IT is smaller and all tech firms are tapping into this pool; so definitely, the war for talent is there,” said Priti Rajora , global head, talent acquisition, Wipro Technologies .

On their part, India’s top outsourcing companies TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL have already started setting up development centres in locations such as Atlanta and Michigan. While TCS aims to double its foreign workforce from 10,000 currently to 20,000 over the next five years, Infosys and Wipro could see non-Indians account for 10-15% of their total employee base in next 3-5 years, from around 5% currently.