Global economic slowdown to have limited impact on IT hiring in India: Survey

The global economic slowdown is expected to have limited, short- term impact on hiring in the Indian IT sector, reveals a new survey by senior management job search portal HeadHonchos.com.

The survey was carried out among senior HR Managers of leading IT companies in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore to test sentiments in the IT industry, a sector that is most sensitive among other industries to global market movements.

This survey comes at a time when the industry is looking to understand how deep or long-lasting the impact of the slowdown will be.

The findings of the survey suggest that industry is today better prepared to deal with the current slowdown as compared to 2008. As many as 62.9 per cent of the respondents do not expect the global economic scenario to impact hiring plans. While 37.1 per cent of HR heads surveyed expect to cut back on hiring, interestingly only 8.1 per cent of the respondents expected the slowdown to have any long-term impact.

The four major trends that emerged from the survey are as follows:

Trend 1: Majority of companies are expected to proceed with their hiring plans for FY2011-12

• 62.9% of the respondents will not reduce hiring at all as a result of the global economic slowdown
  
• 29.0% of the respondents expect to scale down hiring plans by upto 20% over the next 6 months
  
• A small minority expect to reduce hiring by over 30%

Trend 2: The hiring outlook in North and South India is more optimistic than in the western region

• 64.7% and 72.7% of respondents in the Delhi NCR and Bangalore respectively indicated that hiring plans will not be affected
  
• In contrast, only 33.3% of the companies in Mumbai anticipate that the global economic scenario will not impact hiring plans

Trend 3: Those organisations that plan to reduce hiring expect the impact to be felt across all levels

• 69.2% of companies who expect to reduce hiring believe that it will have an impact across all levels
  
• 26.9% indicated that the impact will be higher on middle and senior management hiring
  
• The impact on entry-level and junior hiring will be marginal

Trend 4: Impact of economic slowdown over the longer term is expected to be limited

• 91.9% of the respondents believe that the impact will be limited to the next 6 months; only 8.1% expect any long-term fall-out
  
• 4.9% expect that the impact will be felt over the next 2 years
  
• 3.2% of all respondents expect that hiring will be impacted over a 2-5 year period

''The hiring outlook for the IT industry is holding steady and feedback from companies indicates that they are better geared to deal with the challenges ahead," saysUday Sodhi, CEO, HeadHonchos.com.

According to Sodhi, there was good traction in terms of IT jobs for mid-management and senior candidates over the last six months and companies regisstered with the portal were going ahead with hiring decisions.''