Salary growth in IT sector will be flat: Survey

Bangalore, Apr 11 (UNI) Painting a not so impressive picture for fresh IT professionals in terms of salary growth, a survey today indicated that the growth will remain flat though there will not be a negative growth.

'CareerNet Campus Compensation and Students Perception Survey 2008' had found that the higher salary growth would soon become a thing of the past. It would rule in the range of 12 to 15 per cent and the growth would be flat, though not negative.

IT majors were looking more towards hiring graduates, other than engineering graduates, like those passed BSc and other disciplines, train them and pay for their higher education to bring down attrition rate. This trend had risen by 15 to 20 per cent across the sector last year and the growth would be 30 per cent next year, the survey noted.

Speaking to reporters, Rishi Das, CEO of CareerNet Consulting, which did the survey, said there was however a 17.6 per cent jump in entry level salary for the last fiscal compared to the previous two years across the domains. In IT services, the average compensation for a fresher was Rs 2.74 lakh per annum.

The team from CareerNet had contacted respondents from 59 companies across the country as well as 2,200 students from IITs and engineering colleges, he said.

A new phenomenon witnessed during last year was that nearly 15 per cent of the IT professionals had opted out of the sector and looked for 'brighter' options in venture capital, education and telecom.

He said the survey indicated that 56 per cent of IT professionals felt job satisfaction and recognition as most influencing factors to stay beyond one year in an organisation.

The impact of recession would be seen from next year in the Indian IT sector and the worst hit would be semiconductor sector, he added.

Listing out the findings on the students perception, Mr Rishi said the survey found 22 per cent of students landing job offers in their preferred IT product domain. Twenty-nine per cent of female respondents had preferred a career in IT service sector, as against only 15 per cent male respondents.

He said 71 per cent of students received offer in the range of Rs three to five lakh across campuses during the period. Among these, 15 of the respondents had received more than one offer.

Fixed cash was most important part of compensation for freshers, while a whopping 53 per cent of students had negative or not so positive opinion about ESOPs as they preferred a higher package to stock options, he added.

UNI RS ROY 1727