Indian Outsourcing Firms Lay the Groundwork to Hire More Americans [WSJ]
By NIRAJ SHETH
NEW DELHI -- A wave of anti-offshoring sentiment in the U.S. Congress is prompting India's biggest tech companies to prepare for something unexpected: hiring Americans.
Outsourcing giants Infosys Technologies Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. -- long derided by some U.S. politicians for taking U.S. jobs away -- are laying the groundwork to boost the number of jobs they create stateside, mostly to make sure they can still do business if the U.S. passes legislation that restricts their ability to send Indians to the U.S. to work.
As U.S. unemployment rises, such legislation could come soon, observers say. Already, a provision in the stimulus bill signed by President Obama on Tuesday makes it much harder for U.S. banks bailed out by the government to hire foreign tech workers.
While the new provision doesn't directly affect Indian outsourcers, it "set the alarm bells ringing," says Pratik Kumar, head of brand communication for Wipro. "This is a precursor to what is going to be the prevailing mood."
The stimulus bill provision increases the requirements that have to be met for H1-B visas, which allow U.S. companies to temporarily hire foreign workers in a specialty field, such as technology.
Infosys received 4,559 H1-B work visas while Wipro was granted 2,567 in 2007, the latest year data are available, making them the largest recipients of the visas in the world. Microsoft Corp. received about 900. In 2007, 34% of all H1-B visa holders came to the U.S. from India, the largest recipient.
To prepare for any restrictions on new visas, Wipro, India's third largest software exporter by sales, has been in talks with universities in the Atlanta area, where it has an office. The company will start a pilot program at Kennesaw State University this year and plans to hire 500 students in its first two years. It's the first time the Bangalore-based company will recruit at an American campus, says Mr. Kumar.
Once hired, the students would take a 10-week distance-learning course, the same online training given to Indian hires, he adds.
Infosys, India's second largest outsourcer after Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., has been recruiting on a small scale in the U.S. for three years. So far, the company has hired 600 U.S. college graduates and plans to increase those numbers as competitors like Microsoft cut staff.
"If there are more restrictions on H1-B visas, local hiring is the option out," said Nandita Gurjar, head of the company's human resources group.
Hiring Americans comes with a downside for the companies. Indian outsourcers grew quickly by utilizing low-cost, skilled Indian engineers, but the heftier salaries they have to pay to Americans cut into that cost advantage. Still, if Indians are going to compete with U.S. and European outsourcing companies, they need to have people in the U.S. to work face-to-face with customers, the outsourcers say.
The companies' plans to ramp up recruiting in the U.S. come as they sharply slow hiring at home because of the downturn in the global economy. Infosys says it made 15% fewer offers to Indian graduates this year, while Wipro said last week that it didn't plan on hiring any more than the 8,000 Indian graduates it has made offers to so far this year. Last year, the outsourcer took in 13,600 new hires. The two, among others, have also postponed hiring many Indian students they made offers to last year. Wipro had 1,100 fewer employees in December than it did in September. |
