Bangalore: Even as the deteriorating economic conditions are rendering thousands jobless worldwide, India seems to be bucking the trend. In just one week, companies have unveiled plans for massive hiring.

The IT outsourcing sector now has huge hiring plans, despite being vulnerable to the global slowdown. The top five IT companies are set to recruit over 80,000 people this year even after revising earlier hiring targets. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies - both have adopted a strategy of staggered recruitments - did not so far have scaled back its hiring targets announced earlier this year. TCS, in fact, is set to hire around 48,000 people - just a few thousand short of the number its top customer Citigroup announced it plans to shed in the coming months.

Life insurance companies, the Indian units of foreign drugmakers and the outsourcing sector are clearly on a hiring mode. MetLife, Max New York Life, Tata AIG, Bharti AXA and Aviva are some insurance companies that are in a ramp-up mode as the sector looks forward to boost its staffing levels by around 50 percent over the next few months.

While MetLife India is looking to recruit about 2,000 managers and a whopping 30,000 advisors in the coming months, global management consultancy firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is planning to hire 3,500 employees in the country, aiming to take the total headcount in the country to 12,000 in the next three years.

The industry could hire up to 300,000 financial planning advisors and some 30,000 managers by the end of this financial year to end-March 2009, as it girds up to tap a virgin market, industry officials say.

"Insurance products are perceived as long-term investment tools and people will continue to buy irrespective of the financial crisis. We plan to expand our operations and spruce up recruitment in the next few months," said Max New York Life Insurance director & head of agency distribution, Rajender Sud. The company has around 61,000 agent advisors and 15,227 employees, of which around 21,000 agents and 8,000 managers were hired in the last six months. It plans to add 70,000 agents and 10,000 employees by the end of 2009.

The sector was long dominated by state owned LIC. The companies expect a good financial performance by the sector to justify their hiring spree. Private players have recorded a growth rate of around 42 percent in first-time premium collections for the first half of the current financial year, indicate data available with the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority.

Source: The Economic Times & Business Standard