2005 belongs to freshers, says recruiter

Entry level hiring in the IT sector will grow 28 per cent this year over last year, says Monsterindia.com, an online recruitment business, based on feedback from several human resources (HR) managers in IT firms.

The year 2005 is seen as the "year of freshers", the recruiter says, following a panel discussion with human resources heads from many companies. Recruiting firms will have to grapple with filling more entry level posts while ensuring the minimum quality standards are met, says Monster.

"The trick," says Charles Judy, who heads recruitments in India, for Deloitte, "will be to differentiate and identify the brightest."

A majority of the companies will continue to target engineering colleges through campus recruitment.

Anita Padwal of Onward Technologies says, "We will be hiring mechanical engineers with distinction." Though the focus will be on the top eight cities, organisations are likely to go after talent in tier II towns also.

T V Prasad, a senior human resources manager at Mentor Graphics India, says, "The accent will definitely be on the quality of talent."

So colleges will feel the heat to turn out graduates rich with soft skills also. Companies will have to focus on branding efforts to entice potential recruits away from competition, says Shalil Nair, chief human resources manager, Siemens.

Companies will also find it difficult to persuade fresh recruits to work on areas like quality assurance and testing, says Mahesh Ramalingam of Computer Associates.

"Everybody is keen to work mainly on development-relate work." Matching a recruit's profile to the organisation's needs will take up much of the HR managers' time this year, says Rajnesh Khosla, an HR manager at Agilent.

In recent months, Monster says its website has registered a 14 per cent month-on-month increase in resume postings.