http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-12-09/news/30498276_1_clusters-hubs-sangeeta-lala

Industry hubs, created by various states, are likely to be hot spots forhiring in the next five years, according to TeamLease India Labour Market Report.

Over the past five years, Bangalore and Mumbai have emerged as the biggest clusters, followed by Pune withIT, manufacturing and engineering and Ahmedabad with healthcare and pharmaceuticals along with manufacturing and engineering.

Mumbai, the biggest and most diverse city-sector cluster, will see hiring sentiments head north, driven mainly by IT. Infrastructure hiring may go downhill. Bangalore too is likely to fare well on hiring sentiment, while Pune is another case of reform initiatives working well.

The report, however, says infrastructure in these cities is a cause for worry. "Businesses expanding operations need land and human resources, supply of both of which are acutely short in these cities," says Sangeeta Lala, senior vice president , TeamLease Services.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/job-fair-to-be-held/210515-60-119.html

BANGALORE: Indian Institute of Job Training, a vocational training provider is holding a job fair� free, for the youth of Bangalore and promises great job opportunities in top companies. The job fair is to be conducted on December 10 from 10 am to 6 pm at IIJT Education,� Farha Tower,1st floor, adjacent to Barton Centre.

Currently over 160 positions are available in sales and finance for candidates who are tenth, twelfth pass and diploma / ITI in electrical or mechanical. Companies like Building Control Solutions,JC Infomedia and Merc Elevator are participating in the day long fair.

Shajan Samuel, divisional head at IIJT education, “The career fairs are an effort from IIJT to bring jobs to a candidate’s doorstep when he is able enough. As skilled manpower is getting scarce, this event will provide a platform to attain the talented resources that many companies are looking for.”

IIJT also provides training to candidates in soft skills. This allows the candidate to ensure he or she makes the best of the opportunity. IIJT has been conducting job fairs across several cities over the past few months and has got extremely good responses from candidates. For job fair registrations and details contact toll free number 18002666777.

http://www.mydigitalfc.com/news/financial-services-slowdown-takes-toll-cas-583

CHARTERED accountant, once a title that guaranteed a cushy job in India, is losing its sheen as a broad-based slowdown is spreading across the entire spectrum of financial services in India and overseas.

“This year was perhaps the worst ever in terms of the percentage of final year students who were placed during the ICAI placement with only around 15 per cent students registered getting jobs. This is much worse than the percentage achieved even during the 2008 global financial crisis year and half of that achieved in the previous placements,” said Pankaj Jain, council member at Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

In the previous round of placements, according to Jain, the ICAI achieved a success ratio of almost 30 per cent students who had registered. The institute organises placements during February-March and August-September each year.

K Raghu, chairman at the ICAI’s committee for placements, said, on an average, the institute places 1,500-2,000 CAs every cycle out of 3,500-4,000, who are interested in jobs. “Lot of CAs work out career paths on their own and merely register in the job fair to independently find out their market worth. In our placements, around 100 companies participate on an average,” said Raghu.

“The balance students who don’t get placed either pursue further studies or in many cases set up their own practice,” said Jain.

This year has been particularly trying for financial services professionals as the whole swathe of financial services businesses have slowed down. New business premia at life insurance firms are down while general insurance companies are mired in losses. Banks and NBFCs have both seen a slowdown with reduced demand for loans from corporates as capex gets frozen on concerns with respect to final demand. The broking business has also seen a huge drop in volumes, which has led several brokerages to seek buyers to stay afloat.

“There is an overall reduced demand for talent in the financial services business. Private banks and distribution houses have both been facing a major problem as fee income from distribution of mutual funds and insurance has declined. Many foreign banks are shrinking their retail portfolios too. So in such a scenario it’s understandable that demand for fresh talent is muted,” said Shahzaad Dalal, vice chairman at IL&FS Investment Managers.

According to Prime Database, debt raising in the six months ending September 2011 fell 12 per cent to Rs 1.02 lakh crore. “The financial services business has been a large employer of CAs for the past few years, but this year, it has cut down on hiring and, in fact, had let go of several professionals due to weak business conditions. With the industry globally being weak, BPOs too, have not been hiring for lower demand overseas,” said Amit Tandon, MD of Institutional Investor Advisory Services.

According to Tandon, most financial services firms are going slow on their expansion plans as their bleeding balance sheets are making it difficult to sustain losses in bear market conditions. For students who thought that they could take a sabbatical from work and focus on completing their CA for better job prospects, the low placement ratio would be a bitter pill to swallow. In fact, this year has seen one of the highest number of students passing out in recent times at about 11,000, according to Jain. This has helped the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India become the second largest accounting body in the world (behind the US) with close to 180,000 chartered accountants in India, added Jain.

“The broking business in India has seen a 30 per cent drop in turnover with a drop in both volumes as well as commissions. Retail broking volumes are virtually non-existent and the investment banking market is virtually dead while deal making by private equity firms have slowed to a trickle. The primary market for fresh equity capital raising too is in a very bad shape,” said Atul Kumar, CEO at boutique investment banking and wealth management firm Genome Capital.

The last six to eight months has also seen mutual fund assets fall by 15-18 per cent, something which did not even happen in 2008 at the time of the global financial crisis. Sales and dealing staff at many brokerages have been halved while wealth management firms have culled their employee base. “Many investment banking firms have retren-ched staff while mutual funds too are barely hiring. Insurance firms too are barely recruiting so where is the new demand going to come from,” said the CEO of a large industrial house-owned financial services group, who did not want to be identified.

“There has been a 20-30 per cent reduction in employment in the banking financial services and insurance sectors and this reduction has not yet stopped. Even salary growth in the sector has been blunted,” said Manish Sabharwal, chairman at Teamlease Services — one of India’s largest temp staffing firms. In fact, data on the biannual placements organised by the ICAI suggests that the average salary offered to freshly qualified CAs in the latter half of calendar year was lower than that offered in the first quarter of the calendar year. “There has been a perfect storm in the Indian financial services industry,” said Sabharwal.

Industry experts point out that CAs have been falling off the pecking order in terms of prestige as the supply of MBA graduates with a finance specialisation has ballooned. “CAs are being hired more for pure audit, tax and accounting functions as the MBA course design is superior than the CA even though very bright people are doing the CA course,” said Dalal. As a result, where once the best and brightest pursued a CA degree now that qualification alone may not be enough to secure a career. “Standalone CAs may only be employed as accountants. Most others will need to get another professional degree as well, to move beyond. The tendency has been for such candidates to first pursue a CA and then do other courses,” said Kumar.

“Many employers are recognising that you don’t need MBAs and CAs for some particular kinds of job profile. Instead of hiring such people at high salaries and suffering high attrition they are now seeking more appropriate skills for the job in hand and people who will be ready to move to smaller cities and towns where the growth is happening. This is a sign of a maturing labour market,” said Sabharwal.

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/manish-sabharwal-answers-readers-questions/

India Ink asked Manish Sabharwal, chairman of the temporary-employment agency TeamLease, who was profiled in a recent New York Times article, to answer readers’ questions about the Indian labor market and his company’s philosophy. Readers posed tough queries about his business model, his competitors and the hurdles that employers and job seekers face in India. The questions and Mr. Sabharwal’s answers have been edited.

Q.This is sheer exploitation of humans by capitalist forces and must be stopped. How is it possible that this is allowed, with a most callous disregard of the worker’s right to medical treatment, leave on medical grounds, proper housing and toilet facilities and long-term pension benefit?
Prof Anant Malviya
Hoenheim, France

A.More than 50 percent of our employees move on to permanent jobs within a year. Our average salary is three times the minimum wage. We are among the largest payers of employer social security (provident fund, employee pension scheme, health insurance, etc.) in the country. More than 93 percent of India works in the informal sector and we provide a portal to the organized sector. If you include the working poor – people who make enough money to live but not enough to pull out of poverty – India’s unemployment rate may be 26 percent. This is not exploitation; a temporary job is better than no job.

Q.First of all, congratulations on the success of your business. You are obviously meeting a major need in the market by helping firms to get access to the resources they need to grow. In my experience the Indian market for knowledge workers is not as inflexible as it is often portrayed (people can be fired at will just like in the U.S. with few or no repercussions) and major employers are not as squeaky-clean as some would have us believe. What is your perspective on the policies of big IT companies that force young employees into three-year contracts that garnish their wages so the employee loses huge amounts of money if they choose to leave the firm? Sounds like indentured servitude to me.
AUS-CJBCoimbatore, India

A.The challenge for Indian employers is that there is no fiscal model to “manufacture their own employees.” The current educational and vocational system often does not produce kids who can hit the ground running in the workplace, and employers have to invest massively in training. The current contract by employers reflects the payback period for those investments by which they are substituting for the state.

From my vantage point, at the bottom of the pyramid, the working conditions and wages are something that most job seekers in India cannot dream of. Also, I think changes in the world of work mean that lifetime employment may be a thing of the past. The employment relationship has shifted from a relationship to transaction. This is not good or bad but is what it is.

Q.I applaud your entrepreneurship, and I believe that companies like TeamLease are an unfortunate byproduct of India’s dysfunctional labor regulations and epitomize the “jugaad” mentality of Indian entrepreneurs today.

What I am interested to know is how much the regulations have affected the pricing of wages for permanent noncontract workers. Do these regulations set a de facto minimum-wage floor that is much higher than the equilibrium market wages? Do you believe that the wages and very limited benefits offered by TeamLease and its competitors to temp contract workers represent the true equilibrium market wages/benefit packages that would be offered to permanent noncontract workers if the labor regulations did not exist?

When we know that the real market wage for an illiterate laborer in the informal sector in India is around $2 per day, and we don’t consider that underpaid or exploitative, then it stands to reason the same is true for the temp noncontract workers when it comes to packages being offered by TeamLease. Thank you.
Guji2Renton, WA

A.Only 7 percent of India’s labor force works in formal employment. This is because of many factors, but an important distortion is above-market minimum wages. So, labor laws have created a labor aristocracy which pays itself above market and creates conditions which makes it difficult for labor-market outsiders to escape.

Wages are rising all over India, and I’d say the formal employment gap over informal employment has narrowed from 50 percent to 30 percent. The biggest distortions are created by government employment, which pays 200 percent to 300 percent more than the real wage if you include benefits. There is not much of a difference between temp and permanent workers in terms of wages because all labor laws apply.

Q.If you don’t believe that TeamLease “should exist,” and that your approach is a part of the “genius” of India, why don’t you offer better benefits? Just because you represent the private sector, does that mean you should not have more responsibility for the workers you contract? Would it be problematic to take on [partly] the role of government in providing more security to your labor force?
AktaNew York

A.All our employees receive all benefits that a full-time employee would receive: provident fund, health insurance premiums and contributions to a government defined benefit plan. Unfortunately, these benefits amount to almost 40 percent of wages, and the huge difference between gross and net salary makes us uncompetitive with the informal sector. Taxpayer-funded social security is not something India can afford yet; the best social security we can give is jobs and skills. We are a part of the ecosystem. Not a perfect or permanent solution, but a small piece of the solution nonetheless.