Jim Stroud’s The Recruiters Lounge

 

A few years ago, it would have been unheard of for job recruiters to pay a visit to India’s Government Engineering College in Ujjain. The college, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, isn’t anywhere near the top of the nation’s technical school rankings, and it’s not part of the traditional circuit during the job-hunting season. But these days, corporate types are swarming the Government Engineering College campus, and they’re starting to pop up in surprising locales at lesser-known schools. 

Consider Shreyans Mehta, who joined Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) last August. The 23-year-old GEC grad had his pick from some of the big names in India’s technology sector, including Infosys Technologies (INFY) and Wipro (WIT), but decided to go with TCS, India’s largest tech company.

“It’s a dream come true for me,” he says, beaming.  Boom Times  It’s certainly a good time to be a young, college-educated techie in India. The country now accounts for 28% of information-technology and outsourcing jobs among 28 developing countries, according to a recent Nasscom-McKinsey report. And it’s adding new jobs fast as India builds itself into a global technology-outsourcing hub.  The result: Businesses are whipping themselves into a hiring frenzy.

India’s Big Threeâ€â€?TCS, Infosys and Wiproâ€â€?are looking to add a combined 100,000 to their workforce globally. Similarly hungry for talent are giant multinationals such as Cisco Systems (CSCO), Accenture (ACN) and IBM (IBM), which have been beefing up their India-based software development and services. 

READ: India’s IT Labor Pinch