Destination India

It may sound immature to label it as the 'European brain drain' but an large number of westerners are finding jobs at Indian BPOs and other offshore outsourcing ventures.

Call them "adventure workers" if you want, but an increasing number of westerners who join the Indian work force from the U.S. and Europe are quite serious about their careers.

It has been sometime since India's outsourcing and information technology firms have been hiring foreigners at higher and middle levels for their expertise. Now, however, workers from abroad are seeking lower-end jobs as well, such as answering phones at call centres, for a pittance of what they earn in their home countries.

These foreign workers are being seen as emblems of a reverse movement of human resource, as opposed to the more usual Indian brain drain to foreign shores. Typically, the salaries of foreign executives in India are much lower than their earnings abroad and at par with Indian employees, but most firms ensure that their stay here is comfortable by ensuring health insurance, free lodging, special leave structure that allows travel back home as well as providing an environment that is professional.

Surveys by Nasscom and Evalueserve in the past have also indicated that the passage of jobs between India and the U.S. and the U.K. is not a "one-way street." Recently, an industry report by consulting firm McKinsey and NASSCOM has forecast that India's business services and IT exports are expected to surge more than 25 percent a year to $60 billion by 2010. But there are going to be severe hurdles in the form of manpower shortages, rising salaries and infrastructure needs that may make Indian firms look at international locations to conduct operations as well as hire foreigners.

Indian IT companies have set up offices in the U.S. and also China, but they have been largely restricted to marketing, generating new clients as well as establishing a countrywide network that have created very few jobs and that, too, mostly for Indians. In the last couple of years, however, there have been several steps by several IT firms such as Infosys, Wipro and Satyam that have grown rapidly in scale to hire Western employees to deal with local populations abroad and the need to penetrate markets further.

Observers say that overseas professionals feel comfortable working in Indian tech firms, as over the years these firms have imbibed global practices that are inherent in their operations now. As Indian companies continue to expand operations worldwide, they have adapted their management practices and strategies to compete in the global marketplace. Until recently, most Indian software companies employed Indians in key positions in global positions around the world. An onsite posting or assignment was a plum perk that the companies offered budding MBAs and other consultants wishing to move towards marketing or sales.

Indian companies have now begun to realize the significance of having local hands in local markets and have started recruiting sales and marketing people in local markets to represent them. This has not only created a familiarity among foreign workers about Indians and India, but also acted as a push to look for placements when the going is tough abroad.

Source: Offshoring Times