Indian suppliers face recruitment challenges as visa rejections increase

US clampdowns on Indian IT firms bringing staff to its shores is forcing Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to increase local hires.

According to Livemint.com, half of applications for US visas made by TCS in the last two years have been rejected.

H1B or L-1 visas are used by offshore suppliers that put their staff on US customer sites. In response, TCS has increased the number of people it recruits in the US and Canada.

Livemint TCS’s global head of human resources, Ajoyendra Mukherjee, said: “In the US and Canada is concerned, we’re hiring almost 600 per quarter – so that’s a significant number,” said Mukherjee. “We’ve started doing fresh hiring from the campuses in the US. This time we’ve visited 35 institutes in the US.”

“At the junior level (in the US), it’s probably less expensive to hire someone locally than taking someone from India. Everyone thinks getting someone from India would be cheaper, but it’s not true – it’s more expensive at the junior level,” he said.

The US government cracked down on the import of workers from India to protect US jobs.

In the UK, Indian suppliers have also been increasing the proportion of local people they hire. But in the UK a loophole in the immigration system, known as Intra Company Transfers (ICTs), which allows overseas firms with UK operations to bring staff in for short periods, are allegedly abused.

TCS has more than 200,000 staff globally. It is hiring in the UK with investments including the opening of a 300 staff delivery centre in Liverpool that went live in June this year.