Americans head to India for high-tech jobs

Where once the brains of India left for more lucrative pastures in the United States, today a handful of fresh American college graduates are trickling in to sample the fruits of the Indian economic boom.
The change testifies not only to the fact that India, long idolized as a spiritual mecca, is emerging as a place to fulfill material aspirations. It also signals the efforts of Indian companies to extend their global reach and recognition, particularly as they face a crunch in finding qualified homegrown talent.
David Craig, 23, is one of the new American imports.
He had never left home in Tucson, Arizona, when the Indian software outsourcing giant, Infosys, came calling at a job fair earlier this year at the University of Arizona, where he was majoring in engineering management.
Encouragement came from his career adviser, who as it turned out, had just bought Infosys stock. Stinging reproach came from his uncle: Why, his uncle wanted to know, would he want to work for an Indian company and take jobs away from Americans?
In the end, tucking away apprehensions, Craig took the plunge. International experience, he decided, would look good on his résumé. And Infosys would put him through a six-month training course on its campus here in southern India before dispatching him to its development center in Phoenix, Arizona. Craig would be one of its American faces.
But Infosys is not alone in its quest to draw talent from abroad.
A handful of other Indian companies are also making an effort to add foreign faces and accents to their rolls.
Roughly 1 in 10 of the 72,000 employees of Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software firm, are foreigners, and many trained here before being sent to one of the many countries where Tata has its operations.
Air Deccan, the largest low-fare airline in India, is growing so fast that it simply cannot find sufficient numbers of trained Indian professionals.
And Mahindra & Mahindra, one of India's largest car and tractor manufacturers, has begun to scour Ivy League colleges in the United States for management trainees. The company said it is designed in the short term to expose its Indian employees to foreign colleagues, what Rajeev Dubey, the company's human resources chief, called "globalizing our work force."
Today, eight trainees are scattered across its Indian operations, with another half-dozen expected to come on board later this year. In the long term, the company said, it is to expand its global footprint.
For the job-seekers, India represents a new kind of ticket.
Katrina Anderson, 22, a math major from Manhattan, Kansas, accepted an offer from Infosys because, she said, it offered her the most extensive training of any company that offered her a job.
An added bonus was the chance to travel halfway around the world.
"Some people were scared by the India relocation," she recalled. "But that pretty much sold it for me."
When she finishes the training in January, Anderson, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, will return to the United States, to work in the Infosys office in Phoenix.
For the Americans at Infosys, culture shock combines with surprising discoveries.
Both Craig and Anderson admitted to having their stereotypes of India quickly upturned. Craig expected elephants and crowded sidewalks; Anderson expected stifling heat and women who covered their heads.
The Infosys training center, with its 300 acres of manicured shrubbery, is a far cry from much of this country. There is a bowling alley on campus, a state-of-the-art gym, swimming pool, tennis courts and an auditorium modeled after the Epcot Center.
The American trainees are housed in single rooms, instead of the shared doubles that Indian trainees get.
One restaurant on campus has a French chef that caters to the non-Indian palate. The supermarket stocks peanut butter.
Craig, who still calls home nearly every day, said he has made an effort to teach himself a few things about his new, temporary home. He has learned how to conduct himself properly at a Hindu temple. He makes an extra effort to be more courteous. He has learned to ignore the things that rattle him in India - the habit of cutting in line, for instance, or the ease with which a stranger here can ask what he would consider a deeply personal question.
"I definitely feel like a minority here," he said, sounding surprised at the very possibility.
Anderson has tried to ignore what she sees as a penchant for staring, especially by men. She has pushed for and won a coed basketball team. She has donned Indian clothes in hopes of deflecting attention, only to realize that it had the opposite effect.
She has given up brooding quietly when someone cuts in line. "I say, 'Excuse me, there's a line here.'"