Former SBI Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya Says India¡¯s IT Sector Battling A Hiring ¡®Crisis¡¯
Former SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya has said that the country¡¯s IT sector is grappling with a skills shortage ¡°crisis¡±, as companies struggle to meet surging demand and compete with well-funded tech start-ups for workers.
Former SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya, who was ranked as the 5th Most Powerful Woman in Finance by Forbes in 2016, has said that the country¡¯s IT sector is grappling with a skills shortage ¡°crisis¡±. Companies are struggling to meet surging demand and compete with well-funded tech start-ups for workers, as reported by FinancialTimes.
Currently holding the position of software giant Salesforce¡¯s India chief executive, Bhattacharya said that her company was rushing to hire and train staff, after the pandemic had driven up demand as companies have embraced online working and services.
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¡°We are doing a number of things which we feel??in the medium term will solve our issues. And it¡¯s not only us, the entire IT sector is doing [it],¡± Bhattacharya mentioned in an interview with the Financial Times. ¡°In the shorter term, however, there is a crisis.¡±
The shortage is challenging India¡¯s IT companies, which serve as the foundation of the country¡¯s services industry and as back offices to the world¡¯s biggest companies, including Citibank UK, Microsoft and AstraZeneca.
The FinancialTimes also shared the data compiled by Xpheno, a specialist staffing company. The number of active job openings in India¡¯s IT sector reached a two-year high of 129,000 in January 2022, almost double the 68,000 registered in January last year, as per the data.
Steps Taken By Salesforce India
As far as Salesforce India is concerned, they have expanded from 2,500 employees when Bhattacharya was appointed, to 6,500 now.
The former SBI chairperson also said that we are talking to colleges and also establishing relationships with companies that will actually go into [smaller] cities, and pick out the bright guys or girls. We are on the verge of creating another programme for women to return to the workforce.
The 'Great Resignation Spree' In IT Sector
There¡¯s no doubt that the pandemic has changed the entire dynamics of the employment sector across industries, especially the IT sector, with the ¡®great resignation spree' resulting in high attritions in TCS, Infosys, HCL & Wipro, ranging around 15%-25% for the quarter ended December 2021.
And to tackle high attrition rates, Indian IT giants have indicated plans to ramp up hiring in this last quarter of FY2021-22 and for the upcoming FY2022-23. HCL has even come up with a 'Hire To Retire' Platform to solve this high attrition problem.
As per FinancialTimes, the Head of HR at TCS had said during an earnings call that TCS had hired 77,000 new graduates in nine months. The ¡°unprecedented volumes of hiring¡± brought the company¡¯s workforce to more than half a million employees.
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