IT firms unable to get talented employees

Hyderabad, Oct 30: Indian Information Technology (IT) firms reject 90 per cent of college graduates and 75 per cent of engineers, who apply for jobs because they are not good enough to be trained.Wipro has a staff strength of 95,000 and Infosys 1.05 lakh while the Tata Consultancy Services (Tcs) has on its roles 1.43 lakh employees. Last year, Infosys has hired 28,231 employees, including 18,000 graduates with an annual pay packet of Rs 3 lakh each. This year too they are expected to take in 20,000 staff members at Rs3.25 lakh each a year. Infosys is also hiring almost equal strength though there is not enough business.

Currently, 30,000 engineers at Infosys are 'benched'.Why are they still hiring and raising salaries? Because, they cannot find competent persons and due to this reason, this year Infosys has increased its training of its employees to 29 weeks -- that is seven months of training. Why do they need so much training? And why is the quality of applicants so poor? Infosys spends twice as much as its American competitors on training, which is nearly four per cent of its revenue. The reason, experts feel, is that nine half-literates are produced by the colleges for every graduate of passable quality.

And, what is the solution for this? The experts feel that the governments of the day should boost college enrolment from 10 per cent, of those in secondary school, to 25 per cent. No doubt, this will only increase the number of job applicants, not the quality. But there is no other solution, they say.