Canara bank to recruit 3000 employees during this year

Banking job aspirants have now a golden opportunity to work with Canara Bank, the bank has announced to recruit around 3000 employees on various posts during this year.

The Executive Director of the bank Ms. Archana S. Bhargava said “We have significant retirements which are to be replaced and branch expansion programme during the current year.”

The bank would recruit employees on posts including clerks, probationary officers, and agricultural officers, specialist positions in areas such as information technology would also be filled-up.

More jobs to follow in banking sector

The banking sector in the country is on a boom and also this sector will require plenty of trained personnel very soon, as most o of the employees in the nationalized banks about to retire creating a lot of employment opportunities for the young generation.

The Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Bank Mr. T M Bhasin said, “Today, Indian banks employ close to a million people and they will require at least 10-12 lakh trained personnel in the next five years or so, as the average age of employees in the public sector banks is 50. Many of them have been recruited in the seventies and the next two years will see most of them retiring. Approximately, 60-80 per cent of the senior executives and 30-50 per cent middle managers will retire. Banks will need to recruit at least an additional seven lakh persons. Therefore, the youngsters have a great chance of joining the banks.”

Recently the largest lender in the country, State Bank of India announced to recruit more than 20,000 employees in next four years. Various other banks have already issued notices foe recruitment. According to the bank officials the recruitments with the nationalized banks are likely to continue fro a few more years to come.

IMT students get increased salary offers by 12.5%

The students of Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Ghaziabad, have got high salary offers this year. There has been a 12.5 per cent increase in salary offers for the executive education batch at Rs 18 lakh as against Rs 16 lakh offered last year.

Around 30 percent of offers were made by information technology (IT) companies and HCL Technologies made the highest offer, followed by pharmaceutical firms and banks — each at 20 per cent.

Prakash Pathak, head, corporate relations, IMT Ghaziabad said, "HCL Technologies has come to the campus for the first time to hire students of the executive batch. The IT companies are again hiring because their global projects are back on track and we expect this trend to pick up."

The companies that made placement offers include Dr Reddy ’s, ICICI Bank, Dhanlaxmi Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Deloitte and HDFC Bank.

The average salary offered was Rs 12 lakh for the batch of 59 students and the profiles offered were consulting and business analytics in IT, sales, marketing and research in pharma.

He said, "The interesting trend this year was that cross domain hiring happened with banks hiring for their IT profiles. Similarly, IT firms have hired people with banking and logistics backgrounds. Companies have again started showing interest in lateral hiring."

IT leaders to hire 90,000 software professionals this year

The IT software professionals in India should now forget about last year’s recession and look and get ready for new opportunities as India’s top IT firms including Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are set to hire around 90,000 software professionals this year, as against 20,000 last year.

After global economic crisis last year IT companies stopped hiring and shed jobs in December 2008, since then it is the first time that a recruitment of software professionals on such a large scale is going to be done by top IT leader’s.

According to recruitment firms and HR honchos employed with leading IT firms the sector has witnessed the highest ever job creation in September and the staff strength will increase over 50%, similar to pre-recession levels.

E Balaji, director & president, Ma Foi Randstad said, “This is the highest hiring growth recorded in the IT sector since recession. We expect similar momentum till November since companies will be required to complete their annual hiring plan before next year.” According to him approximately IT hiring has grown 20-22% during August-September over the same period last year.

Till 2008, 15% attrition rate was considered conventional in an industry where some firms tried to keep it below 20-30%. Now large GE customers like JPMorgan, Citibank and GE sending more projects to India on the other hand firms such as IBM and Accenture are under pressure to hire more from low-cost countries like India therefore to retain and hire best talent is back.

In addition to recruitment of freshers for new projects, companies have also started building bench strengths for future business. Pradeep Udhas, executive director and head of IT advisory, KPMG said, “IT biggies are stocking up skills and training them in advance in anticipation of new contracts they are expected to bag in the near future.”

He added, “Some of them are also expecting attrition, and hence a preventive measure. All major companies like TCS, Infosys, and Cognizant have exceeded their expected earnings levels.” He is hopeful this renewed hiring momentum will continue for another year.

MphasiS, last year had recruited around 1,156 employees and in its last quarterly results it had declared a manpower base of 38,275 has said at present there are more than 2,000 vacant positions within the company.

MphasiS chief human resource officer Elango R. says, “We never stopped hiring even during the downturn. What is encouraging is that some of the other companies that ceased recruitment have again started hiring.”

The main recruiters say in tier-I companies the recruitment is still at pre-recession levels, and it will take sometime to pick up in the mid-level as the market landscape has changed. They say, but specialist companies like those in product development, analytics and testing are still growing and, also speeding up in recruitment.

Ikya Human Capital Solutions MD Ajit Isaac says, “Recruitment may be back, but there is much more sanctity now.” He says, “Recruitment is much more planned now with a small bench. Companies are also much more disciplined and avoiding employees who frequently change jobs.”

Mahindra Satyam making comeback trail, is also planning to hire around 3,000 by February next year. The company at present has 27,000 employees on rolls, from the past few months has been hiring fresh talent and, during May-July it had hired around 3,000 people.

IIM-A formulated placement reporting standards for all B-schools

The placement reporting standards for all B-schools in the country have been formulated by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) so that, there is greater objectivity and uniformity in the manner placement reports in B schools are projected in the media.

The decision in this regard was taken in a recruiter conclave organized by IIM-A on Friday in Mumbai. The conclave was attended by around 160 recruiters, including Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Bank and Indian Bank.

From B-Schools, placement coordinators from institutes such as IIM-Calcutta, IIM-Shillong, IIM-Lucknow, IIM-Indore, SP Jain Institute, ISB Hyderabad and others were present.

The placement in charges of other institutes and recruiters provided the inputs at the conclave. IIM-A will soon draft a proposal on this and send it to all stakeholders for discussion and get their reviews.

Placements chairperson at IIM-A Saral Mukherjee said: "We'll try for a consensus among B-schools to publish the standards very soon."

“The standards will have guidelines as to what details of the students' placements and the pay packets offered were to be shared with the media by the placement cell and what was the appropriate time to do so."

About the general trend of recruiters offering packages in terms of Cost to Company (CTC), which is very different from what a student will actually get, Mukherjee said, "We will be requesting the companies to be clear on the components of the package like joining bonuses, one-time relocation expenses, variable components and so on, so that there can be more clarity."

Common banking entrance test for public sector banks proposed

Public sector banks (PSBs) will also be having common entrance test for hiring new talent.

A K Khandelwal committee had recommended the common entrance test which has been accepted by the government. The Indian Banks Association has also accepted a common recruitment program for PSBs which will be conducted by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS).

Earlier in January, Business Standard had reported that IBA is working on the process of a common test for job aspirants in PSBs. The banks are planning to recruit around 34,000 officers and 51,000 clerical staff over the next three years, through a common entrance test program the issue of manpower shortage in state-owned banks will get solved.

The finance ministry said in a media statement, “Taking note of the fact that many PSBs are already utilising the services of IBPS for recruitment of clerks and officers, the government has decided to entrust IBPS the responsibility to conduct the Common Recruitment Examination for the PSBs.”

IBPS was established in 1984, it is an autonomous body which is responsible for recruitment and internal promotions in banks and financial institutions. For year 2009-10, for the recruitment in PSBs, IBPS conducted written test for around six million candidates at 125 centers across the country.

The Khandelwal committee presented its report in June. In its report the committee had recommended that bankers can design the content of testing, methodology for conducting such tests and also review the existing arrangements. Government is reviewing the full report.

The banks are facing problem in hiring talent, so a need was felt to formulate a program to solve this problem. It is believed the common test will also help in cutting down the recruitment cost and the consumed. Moreover, the jobseeker will also find the proposed selection process convenient as they will not have to take separate tests for different banks.

Before this, the Banking Services Recruitment Board looked after the selection process of bank employees. At that time banks were on the process of massive expansion. In 2002, after the Narasimham Committee recommendation in view of banks rationalizing their branches, this process was done away. With this banks got more autonomy in choosing candidates.

Nasscom says: Companies should start hiring students only during final year

The engineering college students have entered into the seventh semester and most of them expect to get hired during this semester but a large debate is going on when is the right time to hire students. According to Nasscom the IT companies should start hiring only during the final semester or at the end of the seventh semester. However some universities are approaching to Nasscom requesting for them to ask companies to start campus recruitment process.

Recently Thanjavur-based Sastra University wrote a letter to Nasscom in which it has requested them to ask companies to conduct their recruitment during the seventh semester. Sastra says in the seventh semester the university encourages doing internships in various universities, companies and premier research labs, inside and outside India.

The letter from Dr S Vaidhyasubramaniam, Dean (Planning and Development), Sastra reads, "Such students miss the opportunity of attending campus recruitment, as an internship of high quality is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity... Students are forced to travel repeatedly in the event of not being selected by the first few companies. This will dilute the quality of internship and strain the relationship between the university and internship partners, who feel such frequent interruptions, upset the internship schedule."

But Nasscom is not ready to change its decision. K Purushottaman, regional director of Nasscom says, "It is in the interest of the industry to hire students in as finished' a state as possible. The end of the seventh semester is the best time, since most of the academic curriculum is completed, with just the project in the final semester to go. So companies can make a better assessment of the candidate at that stage."

Some of the IT majors support Nasscom’s stand. Pradeep Bahirwani, VP of Talent Acquisition at Wipro Technologies says, "We hire from the eighth semester onwards from engineering colleges. We feel this is most appropriate as students are fully groomed around that time. Additionally, hiring around the eighth semester matches our demand forecasting schedules." During the current fiscal Wipro will be hiring about 11,000 freshers with 65% of them being from engineering colleges.

T V Mohandas Pai, head of HR at Infosys said, "Early hiring destroys the spirit of education. Students who get jobs in the sixth semester typically show a drop in interest in academics and this is not good for the student, the university or the industry." According to IT industry only about 25% of the students are employable.

Vaidhyasubramaniam argues that a sudden behavioral change in a student who was just involved in studies for seven semesters is an issue concerning his/her fundamental values. "Such students will behave the same way even if the recruitment happens in the eighth semester," he says. But not many agree with his argument.

Sastra says in the eighth semester curriculum, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) integrates its Initial Learning Program, while in the final semester there is an orientation program conducted by Infosys as part of course work at its Mysore office. Therefore early hiring will be helpful.

Pai says such programs can be conducted even if students are hired at the end of the seventh semester. He says, "Besides, we prefer to hire students as close to the joining dates as possible."

Before economic slowdown, IT companies used to hire students at the end of the sixth semester one year before they graduated but during the financial crisis all over the world many companies were unable to give jobs to the all the students who were given offer letters during campus recruitment. Then most of the companies were also concerned that students are far from industry ready. Thus Nasscom issued instructions that companies should start campus recruitment only at the end of the seventh semester.

The companies also find this right as they have a clearer idea of their recruitment needs. Shankar Srinivasan, chief people officer of Cognizant points out, "We believe it is a win-win situation for all concerned: students, academia and the industry."