Pink slips…Hiring, the word seems to have suddenly gone out of fashion….

Hiring, the word seems to have suddenly gone out of fashion. In the current times of belt tightening when pink slips and recruitment freezes have become order of the say, reports of hiring sound unbelievable. But, yes there are companies who claim to be hiring in this tough economic climate.Interestingly, these are not the companies who have so far remained untouched from job cuts. They too have seen their share of trimming, but also have plans to hire. Here’s over to the companies who still have some good news to offer.

As of January 13, 2009, the Mountain View-based search giant, Google had as many as 350 openings spread across engineering, marketing, product management, people operations, legal and sales domains.However, Google too hasn’t been spared of slowdown tremors. The company has been cutting back on some of its most celebrated employee perks. Instead of a $1,000 holiday bonus which its employees get every year, 2008 saw it getting swapped by a free smartphone.

During the fourth quarter Google hired 99 workers, though press reports indicate that the company cut outside contractors. Also, in January, Google announced that it would allow employees to take advantage of a “one-for-one stock option exchange,” designed to give them more financial incentive to stay with the company.

Networking major Cisco is another company which still has job opening. According to Fortune, the company, which got 6th position in the best companies to work for, offers as many as 500 openings in the engineering disciplines and customer advocacy (as of January 13).The largest maker of networking equipment, posted second-quarter profit that topped analysts’ estimates after embarking on a plan to cut $1 billion in costs by July.

Net income was $1.5 billion, or 26 cents a share, compared with $2.06 billion, or 33 cents, a year earlier. Investors view Cisco as a barometer for the technology industry due to it being a dominant seller of routers and switches, products that direct and control the flow of data.Recently, software giant Microsoft shocked everyone by announcing up to 5,000 layoffs, the first mass layoffs in its 34-year history. The company, however, says that it has plans to hire an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people. Although it needs to cut back on expenses overall, the company says it will keep hiring to support its business strategy in key areas.

Microsoft will “continue to hire in most of the areas it has been investing in, areas such as online services, search and cloud computing, to name a few,” a company representative said in a statement. Analysts believe that Live Search and the Server & Tools division are the two areas where the company is likely to continue adding up.Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts during a January 22 conference call. “We’re going to continue to invest in important areas of opportunity for the company,” Ballmer said. “So even while we take out up to 5,000 jobs, we will also be adding a few thousand jobs back in the areas like search, where we continue to see incredible opportunity to do good work.”

New York-headquartered Accenture too is upbeat about hiring in the current recession times. The company has thousands of job openings and is looking for people with specific IT skills, such as Java, J2EE, industry expertise and government secured clearances. The company is also hiring for corporate roles which include finance and sales development.

Accenture has already announced that it would be increasing its India headcount from the current level of 37,000 to 50,000 in a year. However, the company is not untouched by slowdown pains, it recently laid off at least 500 workers in a “redundancy’ programme in Philippines. In a statement the company said it is implementing a redundancy programme “to balance the skills of its workforce against the demand from its clients”.

Also, the company has instructed its employees in India not to take any leave till March 31, 2009. The company has also increased its working hours in India centre by one hour daily.

IBM, the world’s largest technology services company, plans to open a new computer support center in Iowa, creating up to 1,300 new jobs and defying a trend of widespread corporate layoffs. The company was recently in news for laying off close to 2,800 jobs to trim costs.

The Dubuque facility in a 10-story office building once occupied by now-defunct retailer Roshek’s Department Store, will create jobs for high-tech workers at a time when many technology companies are cutting staff.Workers will provide security services and remote support to IBM customers, helping to maintain computers and software systems primarily located in the United States, IBM said.

Armonk-based IBM which recently gave pinkslips to above 2000 employees in the US and Canada also announced an `innovative’ offer for them: Re-locate to cheaper destinations. In a move to support the pink slipped employees, the world’s largest technology employer has asked its laid-off employees in US and Canada to join its projects in cheaper-wage destinations like India, China, Brazil and Eastern Europe.

The company has asked the laid-off staff to join IBM’s new Project Match programme, which would help ex-employees to relocate in IBM’s low-cost operation countries. Under the programme, the company will also be offering financial assistance with moving costs and immigration help with visa issues.

It seems country’s third-largest IT company is bucking the hiring trend in current turbulent times. According to a web report, Wipro is making around 8,000 campus offers this fiscal year. In an email sent to all freshers seeking jobs in areas such as technical support and offshoring, the IT major has invited applications for 15,000 seats, says the report.

In the mail, the company’s corporate vice president for human resources, says that nearly 14,000 offers were made last year, with the students expected to join by the end of this fiscal. He emphasised that there has been no delay in new recruits joining the company, and that those who received offers this year are expected to join the firm within the next fiscal year.

Incidentally, for the first time ever, Wipro in its Q3 report, showed a drop in its employee headcount in the IT services business by about 1,100 as compared to the earlier quarter.The company went down by 1,092 software engineers and 226 BPO employees during the quarter. Wipro had 96,965 employees as of December 31, 2008, which includes 75,385 employees in IT business unit and 21,578 employees in the BPO unit.

In the JAS quarter, the company had 97,552 employees as of September 30, 2008. Though volumes have grown year-on-year (y-o-y), the number of employees has remained stagnant at year-ago levels.

India’s second largest software exporter, Infosys Technologies, is believed to have slashed its on-site employees in the US. The company has also reportedly put 5% of its global workforce under performance scanner.However, bullish on long-term prospects, Infosys plans to exceed its hiring target of 25,000 for the current fiscal year, up from around 25,000 annual hiring the firm had projected earlier. The company has made some 20,000 campus offers for fiscal 2009-10.

As for the employees under scanner, a company spokesperson said that Infosys has a performance management system in which people are categorised into various groups based on their performance. The company has a personal development plan to improve their performance. If they don’t improve even after them being part of the plan, they are allowed to go.

However, the company did not give any figure on the people who have so far been asked to quit or those who have voluntarily gone under this category. The IT major also said, the BPO number addition has dipped at the end of the third quarter, with the total headcount number standing at 16,941 as against 17,327 at the end of the second quarter.

US-based provider of wireless voice, messaging, and data services T-Mobile has as many as 2163 openings according to Fortune (data as of January 13).The company is looking for people in the areas of retail sales, customer service, engineering & operations, EIT, finance, product development, legal affairs, human resources, marketing, integrated customer experience and corporate communications.Also, the company reportedly hasn’t announced any job cuts so far. With over 36,000 employees, the company has nearly 120 million customers worldwide.