"I worked in IT for almost 15 years but opportunities were coming to a close and there was no growth for me anymore. That same time, the ministry of electronics and information technology approached me to head tourism in Kerala and it was my chance to give back to the society," said Muralidharan, who earlier worked with TCS at various locations.
Muralidharan is not alone. Almost thousands have been hired by various state governments to head projects, including Kerala, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. These governments have been looking to hire the right IT talent through different channels on a contractual basis.
Talking to ET, Priyank Kharge, IT minister of Karnataka, said that even though Karnataka has not done such hiring, but has been constantly looking out to skill and reskill these employees through its centres of excellence. Further, corporates are also collaborating with Karnataka's 'vision groups', which look into emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data. In the mass firings, which clouded India's $160-billion IT industry in the past two years, project leaders or managers with 10-20 years of experience bore the major brunt. According to Experis ITManpowerGroup India for 2017-2018 survey, merely 3% of employers wanted to hire people at the senior level.
Over the past few years, IT companies have been shifting its focus to newer technologies. "Led by the impact of automation as well as new-age technologies like cloud and machine learning, the IT sector has been undergoing a transformation. Last year, there has been a significant change in the urgency of up-skilling to stay relevant in areas like machine learning, AI & automation, cloud, Agile and devops," said Kashyap Dalal, chief business officer at edtech startup Simplilearn.
During these crucial times, while the companies looked to hire newer skills, although not in masses, a number of these states hired such talents to head government projects such as e-governance or tourism-based projects. "Layoffs in the IT services industry is a reality as companies are constantly evaluating people and their ability to add value," says K Sudarshan, managing partner of search firm EMA Partners. However, he added, with government's focus on digitisation, a lot of avenues have been opened up for senior employees which can be channelised in the right direction.
Anil Kumar, cofounder of Xpheno said, "Many of them don't know what career prospects to look out for. Quite a few of them, have opted for freelancing but since they don't have a network and marketing themselves is not an easy thing, obviously they are missing out on projects."
Moreover, cofounder of Xpheno Kamal Karanth said, "GICs are hiring 50,000-60,000 people every year so some of these senior employees can be absorbed. The skills are similar in a way they also manage applications, support infrastructure; all this happens in GICs. So, some of them can be absorbed but if they are not the people who are willing to upgrade themselves regularly, they will be left out."
He further said such hiring have been in happening at the backdrop but cannot always be relied upon as it's not a mass hiring.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sanghamitra Kar
Quelle/Source: The Economic Times, 08.01.2018
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