At a time when worldwide job losses are expected to hit 50 million by 2010, India Inc appears to be positive and bullish on hiring, with more than 60 per cent of companies still going ahead with their recruitment plans. After a respite in hiring in the $12.7-billion Indian BPO exports industry, players have again started putting up the 'we are hiring' sign.

Infosys Technologies Limited plans to conduct campus recruitment across the country next year. The IT major is scouting for acquisitions in new geographies, and is willing to spend $450-500 million on the purchase. According to Chief Executive Officer and Managing director S Gopalakrishnan, the company "needs to get a signal that the situation has improved before it goes to the campuses." Infosys will relook recruitment at the end of the year, Gopalakrishnan said. "If things improve we may go back to campuses in January-February," he added. Infosys made about 18,000 offers last April and will ask them all to join... that would translate into a gross addition of 18,000 employees in the company this year."

Outsourcing giant Wipro is aggressively looking at overseas acquisitions. Regarding the company's plans on recruitment this year, executive director and chief financial officer Suresh Senapaty said hiring had to match demand generation. "As and when demand comes in, we can see hiring." Nevertheless, in Q1 when peers TCS and Infosys posted a negative hiring, Wipro registered a net addition of 710 staff, as the company continues to follow a more conservative hiring strategy.

Having reported a remarkable performance in the first quarter of the current financial year, TCS is also on track to execute hiring plan for financial year 2010. In Q1, TCS has made a gross addition of 2, 828 employees. Meanwhile, TCS has also decided to offer quarterly variable compensation to its employees in India payroll.

The country's top lender, the State Bank of India, is on a hiring spree. The bank is planning to hire 11,000 clerks for marketing its financial products across the country. During 2008-09, the bank absorbed 33,703 new employees and now planning to recruit 13,000 people at various levels during the current fiscal.

IBM Daksh, which does not share its employment numbers, is hiring across all sectors that the company operate in. "It is stronger for segments like BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) and telecom.

Meanwhile, Genpact, the country's largest BPO player, is looking at strengthening its talent capability in specific procurement areas and analytics. While the company is hiring at the entry level in the F&A space, it is ramping up leadership roles at its onsite centres.

However, Accenture has failed to meet its hiring target in India for the current year. It had intended to increase its India headcount to 50,000 this year from 37,000 as of April 2008. But, it fell short of the target by 10,000 heads, recruiting just 3,000, in the last one year. According to officials, instead of laying off people after the slump, Accenture had decided to go slow on recruitment.

Yet, the IT Job market is still very dull and mass hiring is still a far way from being realistic. However, there is certainly hope for a recovery.