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There is a lot of discussion around non-participation of large IT employers in Dataquest-IDC best employer surveya survey in which they were, at one time, regular participants. Equally important is the increasing interest on the part of small but focused firms to take part in the survey. We called it flattening of the IT employment market. But mainstream newspapers who usually cover this survey with a lot of interest, have drawn their own conclusions. Many people in media say that some of the non-participating companies have raised questions about the survey itself.

The idea of this column is not to spend an entire page on defending the survey, but having issued some clarifications, move on to something, which, I think, is a far bigger issue than participation in this survey. In fact, I feel it is a big business issue for the IT industry, not just a technical HR issue.

Firstly, some of the companies, who according to my media friends, have questioned the methodology of the survey, have participated in the BPO Best Employer Survey, which is conducted by the same agency, has the same guiding principle, has same methodology, by and large. Only the actual questions are different. What prompted them to participate in those surveys?

Shyamanuja Das

Here is my answer. Unlike in IT, in BPO, there are few small companies, who offer more challenging careers to employees as compared to large companies. And typically, some KPO companies, which offer better careers look for skills which they cannot get from existing BPO companies employees. In that sense, they are not directly competitors. Furthermore, the slowdown has affected the KPO business more than traditional BPO, further minimizing their potential impact on the labor market. In short, probability of small companies doing extraordinarily well is much lower than it is in IT.

There is one feedback we have got from many companies, however. They have suggested ranking large companies and small companies separately. We have not done that yet, but built mechanisms that would balance the extra challenges before large companies. We may still try something this year.

But what the survey shows, and what other factors in the market point to is a far bigger issue. That is, probably, the feel good HRwith sprinkling of foreign trips, with what IT industry managed to lure young engineers away from other industrieshas run its course.

Other industries in India have become equally global, and level of HR practices have gone up with feel-good becoming a hygiene factor. In addition, what recession in the West has done is, that it has exposed the inherent problems (all industries have their own) with the IT industry.

Not surprisingly, smaller companies have been quicker to respond to this change. That has taken large IT companies off-guard. I am sure this is a temporary phase, and they would be able to manage the crisis. But that will require asking some hard questions, and the new HR regime would be based on finding answers to those questions.

This HR 2.0 will also have to tackle bigger challenges. One of the important ones is: growing disillusionment of young students with IT, manifested by some of their actions like not choosing IT/computer science as a discipline in B Tech courses. In many states, IT and computer science courses in B Tech have found no takers, even in good engineering colleges. Most of it is unreasonable fear, but someone has to convince them about it. The IT industry, too engrossed in its immediate problems, has not found time for that. Or has ignored it, dismissing it as a temporary phase that will pass away. It may well be true.

The IT industry will bounce back. But so will many other industries, and they are today offering a lot more to a discerning engineering graduate.

The author is Editor of Dataquest.
shyamanujad@cybermedia.co.in

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