Syntel Arries: US Visa hurdles
By Sandhya

Over the last 12 months, Techgoss had published a series of exclusive reports giving details of all that was happening inside the BPO, KPO and IT divisions of one of India’s most successful IT-ITES companies Syntel.  One report showed how that in the recent past Syntel BPO was overly reliant on couple of key clients. Also, reported were the exits of the CEO and key HR people.

Regular readers of Techgoss are well aware that a large number of our articles are crowd sourced.  People send in tips, story ideas and even articles. Many of our contributors have full times jobs in IT-ITES, and so prefer using a pseudonym.  A Tipster tells us about the travails of a new Project Arries

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The Syntel Transaction Processing vertical was buzzing with excitement in September when news came filtering in that there would be a new project from UK which would involve many of the people in the team getting an opportunity to work for 6 months in UK.  This was the first bright ray of sunshine after two years of recession induced hard times, and so everyone was excited.  Sadly, there was much disappointment when the Project fizzled out.

Soon there was another announcement that we had a Global Project ‘Arries’ part of which would involve getting On the Job training in America.  The HR Team invited applications for Project Arries which was to be managed from Syntel’s new facility at Airoli, Mumbai.  Then came the usual roadblocks – Only Associates (E1) and above were eligible to apply to work at Arries, and then only if their immediate managers were ready to release them. Even as Trainees were told they could not join this new project, some external recruitment was done. People who got a job in this project were told there were would be no Promotions for one year although the actual salary would increase.

There was much lobbying and many managers’ favourites got a place in the team

Once the basics of the new Arries team was in place,  applications were put in for L-1 Visas for them to get trained in USA.  There was shock when the US Embassy rejected majority of the Visas as they did not meet the criterion of minimum salary.

Due to lack of Visas, the entire migration got delayed from Nov to mid-January, 2010.  People who got rejected for a US Visa next applied for an Irish Visa as the Project has a footprint in Ireland as well. The Irish Visas came through.  Syntel employees working in other teams, who had previously worked in USA and already had Visas were transferred to the Project, to make up the team for USA.

There was some uncertainty with some people being pulled out during the basic training in Mumbai, and then sent back.  The TP Vertical was definitely affected by the uncertainty.

Many are now flying out to begin the Arries On the Job training this week.
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