How to find Jobs after layoffs in Indian IT Industry?
This blog is a reality check on massive layoffs in Indian IT Industry and few career tips for career realignment. It should help you to find Jobs after layoffs.
Tarun Pandey (name changed) was working in Infosys. It was a rewarding career in IT industry. Recently he got a better offer from Wipro and was ready to jump ship. But suddenly there was the news flash that the IT industry is planning for a massive layoff. Tarun, aged 38 is now under deep stress. After around 12 years in IT Industry, what would happen to his career if he too is given a pink slip? He is living under utter uncertainty. Apparently, most of the frontline IT companies are planning to lay off employees.
Such is the case of many employees who is working in Indian IT Industry. With news abuzz of massive layoffs many people are still clueless on how to cope up if this becomes a reality. I am writing this blog to offer a reality check and suggest few alternative career paths for such people.
See here a video from YouTube which describes the situation:
Source: MINT
Is the layoff in IT-Industry real or hugely exaggerated?
In reality, it is a dichotomy of the job market that as IT industry and some start-ups look to cut jobs and downsize other industries like hardware start-ups in the country are struggling to hire and retain skilled employees. Moreover IT industry body Nasscom is calling the 56,000 number of expected layoffs “grossly exaggerated”. According to their estimates, this sector is aiming for $350 billion of exports by 2025 and has been a huge net creator of jobs.
According to a report by the Economic Times, “Workforce realignment is common to any industry and is a part of the regular exercise of yearly performance appraisal processes which only impacts 0.5-3% of the overall IT talent pool,” said Nasscom. The range works out to be between 20,000 to 1,20,000 people.
In order to avoid the axe employees need to re-skill themselves. According to Industry experts, this is the need of the hour. “The need for re-skilling talent is a reality that we have to address. To keep up in a fast-evolving technology environment, the IT industry must reinvent itself by re- skilling its employees in new and upcoming technologies,” said Raman Roy, chairman of Nasscom.
An exhibit by ET Bureau shows back-of-the-envelope calculations show the recent layoffs at Indian IT services companies are a fraction of overall headcount. Most firms explain the layoffs as letting go of under-performers.
Are new employees finding jobs in IT industry after layoffs?
Cognizant is said to be looking to cut roles that have become redundant due to the impact of automation on lower-end IT jobs. When asked Capgemini about layoffs, the company did not deny that nearly 5% of its workforce has been asked to leave but added that it expects to recruit over 20,000 new team members in India this year. As per ET reports, “As part of this de-layering exercise, Wipro is removing additional layers such as that of a “project leader”, which are increasingly being rendered redundant as automation kicks in big-time and newer, more specialized roles emerge in India’s $160-billion IT industry.”
So it is quite clear the layoffs are part of a bigger Workforce Engineering process, where layoffs and hiring will go hand-in-hand.
Where to find Jobs after layoffs in IT Industry?
There are several avenues to find jobs even after layoffs in IT Industry. While jobs in some companies are drying up there are companies from several other industries which is fast becoming a hunting ground for talents.
According to Industry experts, employees need to keep pace with the fast-changing job market to remain relevant. Most of the jobs, or roles, which need the biggest amount of change, are in the technology, fast moving consumer goods, banking and finance, infrastructure, and telecom sectors.
More and more jobs are likely to get reinvented with automation. Tech companies in the US have shed about 63,000 jobs this year alone,” said Kunal Sen, senior vice president, TeamLease. With the rise in complexity of technology, automated testing will stay and grow.
TNN reports, Digital Architect – this is the fastest-growing field in the information industry. An enterprise architect is required to shape solutions for clients and provide the delivery of it. Digital technologies have evolved from Web technologies but taken a form of enterprise applications at present.
The role is necessary for integration, ERP, SCM, e-commerce, etc. A digital architect must know Java: Servlets, JSF, Spring, JUnit, Hibernate, Log4j or other logging framework. This skillset is evolving to add understanding Design Patterns, XP, .NET, JavaJ2EE or similar industry standards.
A person with 15 years of work experience in this function can draw Rs. 45-60 lakh a year in salary, said Shiv Agarwal, managing director at ABC Consultants.
Product Manager: FMCG can fetch up to 3035% increase in salaries. Traditional forms of delivery for FMCG managers i.e., the way they reach out to the consumer, are changing and that requires reskilling. People who have branding skills for FMCG are valuable to the e-commerce space as well.
Additionally, FMCG companies -and indeed most companies across sectors -are focusing heavily on data analytics as a function, which means the profile of a data analyst is undergoing major reinvention.
ET adds Today’s user experience designers are fusionists who have evolved the field of UX from the stylistic endeavour to one that solves spiky technology and social problems. “We’re moving into things like robotics and autonomous car driving, so one can’t be stuck on UX and visual design skills any longer. Employees in the field of design should augment their skills and correlate with fields like affective science, machine learning, contextual intelligence, environmental and material design, etc., and the talent to merge product and service design,” said Mohan Krishnaraj, global head Litehouse (The User Experience Design Group) at Harman Connected Services.
How to find Jobs after layoffs in IT Industry?
Few things are essential before you embark on a new journey. Here I have listed below those essential things:
# Reskilling: Focus on the areas which are fast becoming hot cakes. If your employer is currently considering newer technologies like cloud-based services and investing in reskilling its existing bench, then find out the new focus areas and existing reskilling programs and projects to be amongst the first to make the challenging transition.
# Technical education: If you are clear that your current skill set will not help you advance your career over the next 5 to 10 years then acquire a new skill set you need to acquire new skills ASAP. Consider getting an MTech or an MS in a new domain like robotics AI, natural language processing etc.
# Management education: If you can get hold of a management degree chances are there, that you can launch your own start-up or go to different fields like sales, concept sales, and marketing.
# Hone your soft skills and be prepared for Interview: There are a number of soft skills you should polish yourself before you go for interviews. You can have some ready guide here in my other blogs about Job Interview Tips, which discusses how to handle tricky interview questions.
So weigh all things that matter and take a judicious decision. Do comment in the inbox below about your thoughts on this issue. Let us know how you are planning and realigning you career Goal so that we can guide others. You can search various jobs on our website at https://thehrmonks.com/search-and-apply/
You can submit your resume to us and our team would get back to you. Share these blogs with your friends and colleagues so that they may be well prepared for job interviews the next time.
Source: The data has been collated from various reports of The Economic Times
Sayak takes care of both recruitments and assessment projects of The HR Monks team. He loves helping people finding their dream job.
He started his journey in career leaving the shores of Waiting for Godot and found The HR Monks a better place, where he can change the lives of people by helping them achieve their dreams.
He has been to quite a fewer place across India and loves to travel. He loves two books, in particular, one Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and the other The Shift by Dr. Wayne Dyer.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks