Kolkata: The IT companies like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, Infosys, Mahindra Satyam and Cognizant have once again started recruitment in the middle and senior level, which were largely on hold since the recession. The companies are now undertaking such senior-level hiring to bid for big-ticket IT deals, which are now opening up in the West, reports the Economic Times. According to the Headhunters' estimation, some 3,000 senior professionals have been hired by the Indian IT sector in the October-December 2009 quarter. "The signs are encouraging since October last year, after more than three quarters of complete freeze in lateral hiring by the IT firms," says leading headhunter Ma Foi CEO E Balaji. It is usually from January onwards that clients prepare their IT budgets and invite bids. Mahindra Satyam, for instance, has roped in a battery of senior professionals to rebuild the company and bid for large deals. It has roped in Vijay Anand Vaderu from Wipro to head strategy, Sudhir Nair from Infosys to drive infrastructure management division, Bobby Gupta from IBM to head sales in Australia and Ram Ramchandran from HCL to head ASEAN region. Also, a couple of senior people will soon join the U.S. operations. Patni Computer Systems has recently appointed Naresh L Lakhanpal from Deloitte and Touche to head its American operations, V Mathivanan from Singapore Network Services as President of its Asia-Pacific operations, and Vijay Mehra, who was the global Cheif Information Officer at Essar Group, as Executive VP. Infosys is also believed to be reviewing candidates to head its BPO operations and an announcement is likely by mid-January, Headhunters said. This comes after its erstwhile CEO for BPO Amitabh Chaudhry quit in November last year. However, Infosys' CEO and Managing Director S Gopalakrishnan refused to comment due to statutory silent period norms before the quarterly results. Typically, the average cost-to-company (CTC) for lateral recruits starts at 15 lakh per annum in the IT sector. Despite such high talent acquisition cost, the companies are not shying away from such recruitment. "Nowadays, not even a single day goes without me interviewing 2-3 senior professionals for possible recruitment," says Mahindra Satyam President (Global Operations) Atul Kunwar to the Economic Times. "Since several large value deals are going to happen in the New Year, it is now a necessity to augment our sales team, domain expertise and acquire niche skills. Hence, such senior level recruitment is happening across geographies." Pradeep Bahirwani, Vice President (Talent Acquisition), Wipro, said the company is aggressively looking at senior professionals who have domain or client management experience and leadership experience. "Even though we have a cautious hiring strategy, recruitment of such senior people is a key focus area. Such hiring has also taken place in the U.S. and EU," he said. TCS, too, is expanding its lateral hiring quarter-on-quarter and will further grow it in the days to come, says Global Head (HR) Ajoyendra Mukherjee. Some firms like Cognizant have gone for lateral hiring during the slowdown as way to rope in quality talent. "The pace of decision making in client organizations has accelerated. There is relative stability, if not recovery, in clients' businesses. This has helped accelerate the sign-off and launch of a number of projects. As a result, hiring is aggressively picking up again," says Sriram Rajagopal, AVP (HR), and Cognizant. The company has hired such people in consulting, IT infrastructure services and BPO businesses.