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Go East, Young Hi-Tech Worker
Considering India as Land of Opportunity for Westerners
By Siddarth Srivastava, Pacific News Service
NEW DELHI - August 24, 2004 - During the dot.com boom a few years
ago, India mourned the loss of its best and brightest to the West. Now,
Indian headhunters are talking of foreigners -- Americans, Europeans,
Japanese, Filipinos and just about any other citizen of the world--
coming to India looking for employment.
While there are over 1 million illegal immigrants working in India,
mostly from the subcontinent such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and
Pakistan, engaging in low-end menial jobs, the number of legal foreign
nationals working in India has risen to over 50,000 and growing. While
the number is still small, consider this: Last year, around this time,
there were less than 25,000.
Suddenly, the land of snake-charmers is full of opportunity.
Even Eng, a Norwegian, is working for call center Technovate as team
leader. Miki Chiba, a Japanese, is executive of sales for Infosys,
India's software giant. Magdalena Gazewska is a marketing executive, for
Siri Technologies who hails from Poland. Paul King and David Eddison,
both British, are trainers at Infotech. And Patrick Schapper is a travel
consultant from Switzerland. These, and many more, are some of the
newest faces to India, looking for opportunities.
As can be expected, the first off the block to actively seek out foreign
workers are the nimble call centers whose mantra is: people from every
part of the world for any part of the world. Several Indian call centers
are offering multi-lingual services requiring foreign staff to man the
operations as well as customer interface. Business and Process
Outsourcing (BPO) companies such as Wipro Spectramind, HCL Technologies
are hiring Norwegian, Swedish, Swiss, Dutch and Finnish nationals to
handle the language barriers as well as provide specific cultural inputs
in dealing with clients.
However, the story goes beyond just a replication of low-end hands at
work at call centers. Experts say that foreign manpower, apart from
facing job-losses at home, is moving out to India for the opportunities.
As many leading global technology firms have moved high profile and
skilled jobs here, India has beome an attractive destination.
Prominent headhunters here say that there has been an increase of top
and middle level executives from the US and UK, exploring job
opportunities in top technology firms. This is apart from regular middle
and top-level management positions in multinational companies such as
IBM, GE that have set up huge operations here.
``Lot of foreign nationals are looking at mid-level and senior level
positions in India. Every week, we get at least one well qualified
foreigner looking for a job here,'' says Kris Lakshmikanth, founder CEO
and managing director of executive recruiting firm Head Hunters (India).
``As several IT product firms are setting up shop in India, experienced
professionals from the US are also on the lookout for jobs here and the
trend is being witnessed by the top tier recruitment firms," he says.
``Earlier, only call-center jobs were being outsourced to India,'' says
Anil Mahajan, executive director of Talent Hunt Private Ltd, ``but now
as companies start to ship high-end research and senior managerial jobs
to India, foreign workers see a huge opportunity for themselves here.''
``Till a few months back, we were getting regular job queries from
expatriate Indians who wanted to move back to India. But we were also
taken by surprise when overseas professionals from countries as far as
the US, Britain and South Africa also started to call us up to inquire
about job opportunities here. This has now become a trend,'' says
Mahajan.
John Winchester is one such professional who has recently shifted from
the US to India as vice-president, engineering for the Indore-based
Impetus Technologies. Prior to this, Winchester was working with
NightFire Software, now merged with NeuStar Inc. "Even as my company got
taken over I was ready for a change," he says. "I approached Impetus who
was my client earlier as I was impressed by all the energy in the
company on my visits to India. Several of my friends in the US would be
equally interested in coming here. Mid-career IT professionals are
looking out."
``Everyone talks about globalization left and right," says Joshua
Bornstein, 23, who quit his job in an investment banking firm in Los
Angeles to join Infosys in Bangalore as a manager of corporate affairs.
``India is [where] the world is moving to," he observes.
Other Readings of Interest
-
Outsourcing Blues- Training My Overseas Replacement
By Body Taing, PNS
July 2004 - A young assemblyline worker in Silicon Valley
tells of the arrival of Chinese workers at his company, and the
reaction of a workforce fearful, resentful and in some cases
apathetic about impending layoffs.
-
Hello, Who's There? On Hold with a Call Center in India
By Sandip Roy, PNS
Spring 2004 - An Indian immigrant to the
United States calls for software support and knows that "Joe" is
likely "Jagdeesh," 8,000 miles and many memories away in the land of
the author's youth. Does Joe-Jagdeesh know what a political hot
potato he's become in America?
Srivastava (srivastava_siddharth@hotmail.com) is a
New Delhi-based journalist.
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