Aero India turns hunting ground for talent

Bengaluru: At the Aero India event here, it is not just military aircraft which are on display but also talent. Headhunters attending the biennial show are busy recruiting for their respective defence and aerospace clients.

Driving the need for fresh talent is the government according Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) to 164 proposals worth about ?2,79,950 crore across various defence projects. Also, the Make in India scheme and defence offset clause has forced many multinational defence corporations to ramp up their skilled manpower.

Added to the urgency are the ‘Buy (Indian-IDDM)’, ‘Buy (Indian)’, ‘Buy and Make (Indian)’ and ‘Make’ categories of capital procurement under the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP). IDDM stands for Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured.

According to Mael Humbert, Head – Engineering and PLM Services at Sopra Steria, the European IT consultancy company plans to increase its headcount from 5,200 to 8,000 over the next two years. Sopra Steria has taken to Twitter to scout for talent. It has asked prospective candidates to visit its stalls as well as meet its team to know the kind of work the company undertakes.

Anand E Stanley, President and MD of Airbus India and South Asia, said the company will also leverage the event to acquire talent. “On February 23 and 24, it will offer members of the public the opportunity to explore career prospects with Airbus India,” he said.

The company is looking at skillsets in Avionics Software, Aircraft System Simulation and Airframe Structures as well as in API Development, Full Stack Development, Big Data, Cloud and DevOps.

Another foreign multinational, Thales’s invite for its Engineering Competence Centre inauguration states that it is hiring and those interested can scan the QR code printed there for job description. It targets to hire 3,000 engineers in the next three-five years along with its partners.

Boeing in India has 2,200 employees, and more than 7,000 people who work on dedicated supply chain jobs with Indian suppliers across the manufacturing, engineering and IT sectors. Now, as the company is pitching for orders for F/A-18E Super Hornets, P-8A, C-17 Globemaster III and AH-64E Apache Heavy Attack Demonstrator, it plans to increase its footprint as supply chain, sourcing, engineering and hiring activities continue to grow.
22/02/19 Anil Urs/Business Line