Hiring to be finished in the next 5 months.
By The American Bazaar Staff
BANGALORE: IT giant Wipro has announced its intentions to hire 150 sales staff personnel in the US over the next five months, with that number being a mix of recent college graduates and older, more seasoned veterans of the sales industry.
The Economic Times reports that the reason for hiring exclusively in the US is two-fold: to acquire a sales staff that has a better cultural relationship and proximity with clientele in the US, and to show America that Wipro is helping to create jobs within their borders, not just in India. With other Indian-based IT firms, like TCS and Infosys, Indian employees dominate the sales team.
Wipro has also faced stiff competition from other IT firms, including Accenture and IBM, which are US companies that hire a large number of Indian workers. Wipro has been expanding its US operations significantly over the last year, in an effort to maintain pace with its slight more successful rivals and create a competitive advantage.
In December, Wipro acquired a US-based mortgage firm called Opus for $75 million, as part of a plan to increase the company’s ability to provide financial services to clients. The deal allowed Wipro to absorb nearly 500 employees from Opus’ five major bases across the US, adding to the firm’s substantial US employee haul.
But Wipro needs to work fast, according to board member Dr. Jagdish N. Sheth, who says that Indian IT companies will slowly lose significant ground to a growing pool of talent coming from other nations, mostly in eastern Europe.
Speaking to ET, Sheth, who has written some 40 books about the Indian IT industry, and who has been on Wipro’s Board of Directors since 1999, says that the prevailing mentality seems to be that India is untouchable when it comes to IT, which is flawed.
Sheth says that Indian IT firms need to change and start managing their companies with a more globalized perspective, and hire more foreign workers rather than just importing Indians wherever they go. That’s exactly what Wipro is doing, so it remains to be seen if Sheth and his company’s move will ultimately pay off.