After spending eight successful years at marketing behemoth Hindustan Lever Ltd, and another eight with the Tata group's beverages business, Harish Bijoor thought he had the measure of headhunters. He had just moved to Zip Telecom as coo and was too busy trying to make a mark to notice an increase in calls from headhunters. Then, sometime around June this year, he says, "the offers started to become too compelling".

The buzz had it that Bijoor was set to join Reliance Infocomm, head Starbucks' march into India, or lead a Business Process Outsourcing firm. "I would make up my mind, and then more offers would come my way," says Bijoor. Bijoor ultimately decided to do his own thing and has signed up with the $2 billion Smithsonian Fund to start a brand consulting firm.

Stories of similar high-profile hires abound: Philips India's Senior Vice President Rajeev Karwal is moving to Electrolux Kelvinator as ceo-a headhunter reportedly wooed him for six months; Hutch's Sudershan Banerjee, to an Indian business group that will have to remain unnamed; and hfcl Infonet's ceo Ashwani Gupta, to a MNC tech company.

Middle-level managers may have found the going tough in 2000 and 2001; now, says Gurdeep Hora of Delhi-based headhunting firm Synergy Consultants, they are ''spoilt for choice''. And things are positively ablaze at the junior level. Standard Chartered has recruited over 500 people in the past six months and Wipro 2,373 against a mere 269 last year. "We are not hiring for the future," says Wipro hr Head Prateek Kumar. "We are hiring to meet our current requirements.''

That is the case with a dozen-odd companies BT spoke to-everyone is hiring. ''There is much more buoyancy in the job market,'' explains Rahul Taneja, Country Marketing Head, Consindia hr Services. Predictably, it is the it and it Enabled Services companies that are at the vanguard of the uptrend. Nasscom estimates the number of jobs that will be created by the it sector this fiscal at 6.24 lakh, 19.5 per cent higher than the 5.22 lakh jobs it did last year.

Contributing their mite to the increase in demand are multinational it companies such as IBM and Accenture that have turned bullish on India. But it isn't just it. Old economy vets such as M&M, Sterlite, and Ashok Leyland have upped a gear in their recruitment drive too, the first spurred by the success of its Scorpio SUV and Arjun tractor. ''More than two thirds of our hiring is towards requirements in our R&D and sales and marketing functions," says Anjou Choudhary, VP (HR), M&M. The newer crop of MNCs in smokestack sectors-Pechiney, Lafarge, and Cement Italia-one headhunter points out, have quietly been adding to their numbers in India. Add to that boom-boom telecom, evergreen pharma, and just-picking-up consumer durables and you have a full-fledged recovery. And a great time to be in the job-search business. In the first six months of the year, for instance, job site Naukri.com exceeded its 2001-02 revenues of Rs 4 crore.

All that activity on the jobs front will have an impact on salaries too says Hewitt Associates, which recently released a report predicting an increase in the rate at which salaries have grown. The quantum of increase may be small but it comes after five straight years of negative growth. The FMCG, consulting, and investment banking sectors may be slow coming out of the trough, but B-schools, emboldened by the bumper summer placement season that has just ended are already looking forward to a better year. Go on, update your CV.

-Seema Shukla with additional reporting by BT bureaus

PELF
Rich, But How Long?
Public sector banks that went public have reported bumper profits-thanks to other income.

If you bought one the bank stocks that've hit the stock markets since February this year, you probably are patting yourself on the back. After all, except for the United Bank of India (quoting at a Re 1 discount to its list price of Rs 17), the others-Andhra Bank and Punjab National Bank (the Canara Bank issue closes on November 27 and Allahabad Bank will list on November 21)-are quoting at a premium. Plus, all of them have reported bumper profits for 2001-02 (See table). Time to pick up more of these stocks? Not quite. Most of their profits is from trading in government securities, which has been particularly profitable due to the cuts in interest rates. For example, of Andhra Bank's Rs 202 crore net profit last year, Rs 136 crore came from investment income. Ditto, PNB and Canara Bank. R. V. Shastri, Chairman and Managing Director of Canara Bank admits that such profits from sale of investments are not sustainable. However, Shastri says that with further diversification of portfolio and the economy picking up, interest incomes are bound to increase. Some analysts point out that with a captive customer base and expansion into retail banking, public sector banks promise a bright (investor) future. But you know what bank investors should be really hoping for? M&A in the banking industry.

-Dipayan Baishya

PLAY
Our Own Hitman 2
An enterprising Mumbai company tries its hand at Bollywood-inspired games.

The Legend of Bhagat Singh: Play your own version

Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy were cult games that spawned motion-pics; Harry Potter and Spiderman traversed the reverse direction; but India, thus far, has had no such traffic. It finally does, thanks to Mumbai-based Mitashi Edutainment's Bhagat Singh, a PC-game that seeks to feed off Tips Films' 24.5 crore The Legend of Bhagat Singh. Despite the presence of superstar Ajay Devgan, the Tips release did little to enthuse the box office. Mitashi's 32-year old CEO Rakesh Dugar saw the Tips release once, then he saw it again, and again until he was inspired to create the game. While he is quick to add that the game is not based on the motion picture-who wants to get into tricky copyright issues?-this correspondent found striking similarities during a test drive. The challenge: the gamer must prevent a bill from being passed in the Calcutta Assembly.

At Rs 395, the game is a steal compared to the Harry Potter game that retails at Rs 1,299. Dugar claims sales of 6,500 have made Bhagat Singh, a Hindi-language offering, ''the most popular 3-D animation game in India", edging out the Texas-based iD Software's Quake. Inspired, Dugar is now trying to strike a deal with J.P. Films for JP Dutta's soon-to-be-released patriotic epic loc.

-Moinak Mitra