Women rising as a proportion of Indian IT-BPO workforce: Nasscom HR report

37% of India’s IT-BPO workforce is comprised of Women, while 88% of all employees are 35 or younger, Nasscom’s latest HR survey revealed.

The proportion of women in India’s newest industries is bound to increase in the coming years as they made up 40% of the new hires in the last three years, the survey found.

It also found that close to 90 percent of IT-BPO companies sponsor certification programs for employees while 83 percent conduct such programs internally. Almost 70 percent companies said that they sponsor higher education for their employees.

One third of the employees are aged below 25 years, while around 55% are between the ages of 26 to 35 — the sweet-spot. Another 10% are 45 or below and only 2% of the total employees are older than 45 years, the Nasscom HR survey said.

Not surprisingly, Tata Consultancy Services, which crossed the 2 lakh employee-market last quarter, emerged as the top recruiter during the last financial year, followed by Infosys and Wipro, the number two and three respectively.

“The rankings reveal a surge in hiring, with almost one third of the industry aiming to grow by 25 percent, and a little over two-third of the industry planning to increase their employee base by 10 percent in the coming year,” Nasscom said, announcing the results.

Around half of the respondents said that their cost of hiring has declined over the last three years as a result of increased referrals, campus placements and internal job postings. “Hiring from tier-3 cities has also increased over the last year, and companies that are sourcing talent from tier-3 locations have reported a higher manpower fulfillment ratio,” Nasscom, which represents the Indian IT-BPO sector, said.

As is usual, foreign companies such as IBM, Accenture etc. did not participate in the survey and ranking, possibly to avoid a backlash in countries like the US where companies hiring Indians are not looked upon with a lot of favor by some sections. Many industries have been accused of “shipping jobs overseas” by the current US president Barack Obama.