Encouraged by the double-digit growth rates anticipated in the next financial year, the information technology (IT) industry in India is again on a hiring spree. Related: Infosys hiring 30,000 in 2010

India’s major IT companies – including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and Infosys – have outlined plans to recruit thousands of professionals, both freshers and lateral, in the coming quarters.

TCS said it will hire, in the next fiscal, around 30,000 professionals on gross basis. About 70% of the gross hires will be freshers, and the rest lateral hires.

TCS plans to hire over 2,000 professionals at international locations.

According to N Chandrasekaran, CEO and managing director of TCS, the large numbers reflect the demand environment and that the utilisation is “running up.”

Chandrasekaran said that the recruitments for the financial year 2011 will be across operations – IT, BPO and infrastructure services – and that TCS will hire laterals having ERP skills. The company is also looking for analytics and Web 2.0 skills.

Wipro will, in the next two quarters, appoint 7,500 of its campus recruits who had passed out in 2009. Girish Paranjpe, joint CEO (IT business) of Wipro said, the company will thus complete the process of appointing freshers from the 2008-09 batch.

However, Wipro has not yet disclosed its hiring target for the full year.

As of now, Girish Paranjpe said, the demand for laterals is very strong, and hence Wipro’s recruitment team is trying to get the maximum number of qualified persons who suit the company’s needs on the lateral side. This time around, Paranjpe added, the constraints are more from the supply side than from the demand side.

Wipro has raised wages for its employees based in India. The wages of the employees in locations abroad are planned to be raised.

Infosys has announced plans to appoint 15,000 professionals through campus recruitment in 2010-2011.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, chief executive officer and managing director of Infosys, said the company is looking for acquisitions across Europe, the non-English-speaking countries, and even in the United States.

Gopalakrishnan told reporters at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum that Infosys is open to acquisitions “everywhere, and across verticals.”

He said Infosys have already raised salaries in October 2009 – by about 8%, on an average, in India.

According to NASSCOM, the IT industry in India added about 90,000 jobs in FY10 – taking the number of total workforce to 2.3 million.

The overall hiring for the IT sector is expected to be 1,50,000 professionals for fiscal 2011.

The quarterly global survey conducted by the international recruitment company Antal International asked over 6,000 companies in 30 countries whether they are hiring at managerial-level and professional-level and whether they plan to do so in the coming quarter, too.

As much as 71% of the companies in India surveyed said they are currently hiring, compared to about half of that in September 2009.

The survey report by Antal International also said that India-based companies are planning to enhance their hiring activity even more – with 78% of them intending to hire managerial staff over the next 3 months.

Nigeria – at 79% – is the only country that has a hiring rate higher than that of India’s.

Joseph Devasia, managing partner of Antal International, said in a statement that “confidence is back at its peak in India’s job markets” and that “it’s happy days again for job-seekers.”

The manufacturing and automobile sectors – along with the traditional FMCG, IT, pharmaceutical companies – have stepped up hiring, in contrast to what was seen in Antal’s previous survey, Joseph Devasia said. The increased in hiring activity, according to him, indicates that the need for “exceptional talent” is now more than ever.

On the hiring situation in India, the survey report stated that, combined with “a very low rate of letting people go (16%, and set to fall by a further 3%) the results indicate a “strong employment market which is improving all the time.”

The global survey conducted by Antal International revealed that China and Pakistan, too, have high rates of hiring – at 71% and 70%, respectively. While China foresees a rise in recruitment activity, Pakistan has predicted a decline in hiring activity by 25%, according to the survey.

The Antal report said that though globally some countries are still seeing a drop in the job market, the global picture has certainly improved again. As a result of this, according to Tony Goodwin, CEO of Antal International, there are already the first clear signs of companies once again thinking in terms of the “war for talent.”

Meanwhile, the 5th IDC-Dataquest T-School 2009 survey has shown that the worldwide economic recession has caused a decrease in the placement of engineering graduates in India – with only very few technology schools reporting 100% placement.

According to the survey, there has been a drop, on an average, of 11% in the placement of engineering graduates from 111 technology schools in India in 2009, compared to the previous year, except for 16 of them which achieved 100% absorption.

Of the 54 companies which visited the campuses of technical schools, over half were from the information technology sector and the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

“It is rather unfortunate that due to the continued economic constraints and business outlook, we do not anticipate that we will have the ability to recall many of our valued associates within the VPP period.”

Around 8,000 employees have become a part of the virtual pool that was formed on June 11, 2009. On that day Vineet Nayyar, CEO, Tech Mahindra had said that the VPP employees will be provided with  basic salary, PF and medical insurance.

The six-month period of VPP will come to an end in December, 2009. Since the company does not have enough projects to accommodate all VPP employees, it has sent a two-month notice to over 5000 employees as per the employment contract.

The reason for the axing is believed to be the lack of enough projects to accommodate all the employees.

A Mahindra Satyam spokesperson denied the news regarding layoffs and said that the company has taken 1,500 associates from the virtual pool.

This is where Obama sees a major paradox. According to him the notion that America would have to import nurses makes absolutely no sense. He in fact has suggested that the best possible approach to meet this shortfall is to train people inside the country. He has been quoted as saying that “For people who get fired up about the immigration debate and yet don’t notice that we could be training nurses right here in the United States.”

This could mean bad news for nurses from India who are looking at seeking a career out there in lucrative US. The US Congress has even introduced a legislation, called Nursing Relief Act of 2009, to create a special category of nursing visas, which would facilitate much faster and easier brining of trained nurses from Asian countries like India. According to the proposed law, it would look at making provisions for the new category of visas for registered nurses with an annual limit of 50,000.

As per the legislation, there are more vacant nursing positions in the US than there are qualified registered nurses and nursing school candidates to fill those positions. With Obama going all out to train nurses in his country itself, the thousands of aspiring nurses have started staring at a bleak future.