Coming and Going
As offshoring evolves, Indian firms even hire Americans
Those kinds of numbers have caught the attention of the world's biggest consulting firms. And with huge U.S. companies now going after the same low-cost Indian talent, the Indian firms are trying to turn the tables. Like their more entrenched competitors, the Indian firms are now offering to take over whole IT departments and become business partners with their customers. And they're poaching American executives to help get the ball rolling. Infosys has hired several former Deloitte and Ernst & Young partners to help jump-start its consulting business. Tata, Wipro, and Cognizant Technology Solutions, a New Jersey-based offshoring firm, are all luring American rainmakers from the likes of McKinsey & Co. and PricewaterhouseCoopers. "We're doing a lot of hiring, both on- and offshore," says Bob Rugare, who left Ernst & Young last year to become vice president of Cognizant.
Core IT work--where offshoring firms still earn the bulk of their money--will continue to flow overseas. And most of the U.S.-based employees of the offshoring firms will still be foreign nationals in the States on temporary work visas. But offshoring executives say that they're going to need an increasing number of Americans, too. "My practice is going to rely predominantly on local talent," says Paul Cotton, whom Wipro recruited recently from ConAgra to help run a consulting practice out of Dallas.
Surya Kant, North American president of Indian IT giant Tata Consulting, says that beginning this year, Tata will recruit American tech and engineering grads on college campuses such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia, schools where Tata already runs research programs. Overall, Tata will hire about 500 Americans this year, Kant predicts. "It is more expensive," he acknowledges. "But some work must be done here."
Offshoring firms want to hire people who think globally. The most adept employees, says Rugare of Cognizant, will be those who have "one foot on the boat and one on the dock"--adaptable workers who understand and complement the offshore components of their industry. In the U.S. market, Rugare sees a strong need for business analysts who understand the back-end operations of financial institutions and other big companies and can help design technical requirements that will be fulfilled overseas. "The perfect candidate," he says, "has an undergrad degree in engineering and computer science and an M.B.A." Cognizant has also been hiring American specialists such as doctors, pharmacists, and biostatisticians to help fulfill a big outsourcing deal with a major drugmaker.
Buyer's market. On the ground floor of the global economy, however, the welcome mat can still be hard to find. Diane Collier, 43, is a Dallas-area electrical engineer who was laid off from a local utility last year when much of the work in her department was offshored to eastern Europe. She has both technical and managerial experience and says jobs in her field are still available--but it's a buyer's market, and employers insist on very specific expertise. "And salaries are lower," she adds. "I'm probably going to have to take a 20 or 25 percent cut for comparable work."
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