Offshoring in Reverse

There’s always this great debate on the outsourcing of jobs to India and other Asian countries from US and European countries, but the times are changing and we are seeing the reverse of brain drain as Indian IT companies are hiring more locals in US. The growth of IT industry has truly lead to flattening of global talent marker as well, we now see talents across different nations are being employed by Indian MNC’s. So with the likes of IBM’s and Accenture’s ramping up fast and increasing talent strength at an all time high pace the war for talent also getting interesting.

Business week reports on offshoring in reverse.

In the past, Indian companies almost always transferred Indians to work in the U.S. on temporary visas. But now Infosys and other Indian outfits are hiring aggressively in the U.S. The Indians are recruiting a combination of fresh college grads and experienced vets who have worked at American companies. They're especially active at campus job fairs, and unlike a few years ago students know who these companies are and respect them. In fact, the Indian connection has become an attraction. "I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity, especially because they send you abroad for training," says Brian Oswald, a 23-year-old Rutgers University graduate with a 2006 degree in industrial engineering who joined TCS in February.

The U.S. hiring by the Indians echoes the strategy Japan's auto industry devised after soaring levels of imports sparked political outcry in Washington in December, 2000. "The Indians are doing to the world's IT processes what the Japanese did to manufacturing," says analyst John McCarthy of Forrester Research Inc (FORR). And now, like Japan's carmakers before them, the Indians are becoming major employers in the U.S. as well.