After graduating from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Washington, D.C., in 2005, Scott Stapleton, a 23-year old resident of Oakland, California, faced an unexpected problem. He discovered that his ambition to work abroad had only two avenues: Government job or aid work.

Then he came across Infosys, one of India’s largest IT service providers, which offered an immediate posting overseas. Stapleton, who now works as a middle-level executive in Infosys’ corporate marketing department in Bangalore, India, says he took up the job because “Infosys is an interesting company.”

Is working abroad difficult for Stapleton? “To succeed I had to be willing to adapt to an environment that’s different from anything experienced before,” he says. Of course, it is another matter that the job also gave him the opportunity “to know the Indian cuisine beyond the popular chicken tikka masala.”

Yet, Stapleton is not one of the so-called “adventure workers” who often takes up jobs in developing countries living almost out of backpacks just to “chill”; he is one of the increasing tribe of workers in the West, who in pursuit of gaining experience in emerging markets, are flocking to countries like Mexico, China and, more recently, India.

Until two-three years ago, India or China were not considered places where Americans would opt for a foreign posting. Even Bangalore, known as India’s Silicon Valley, is still known for its “cows on the roads, power cuts, trafficjams, noise, pollution and water-logged streets.” But with India’s impressive economic growth over the past few years and investments pouring in from Fortune 500 companies, corporate staffers from America, Europe and even developed Asian countries like Japan and South Korea are now looking to work in India.

The money is not the main draw. Compensation is much less than in America but of course the cost of living is much lower too. While salaries are reportedly a little bit higher for westerners, but there is no independent corroboration of this anecdotal information.

China Vs. India

To the IT industry honchos, working abroad is not a fad. Rather, it is a consequence of globalization that requires transition of knowledge from the developed countries to the emerging markets.

“By default, a lot of knowledge that has existed in the United Kingdom and United States has to be transitioned [overseas], and that requires a number of people from the U.K. and U.S.A. to go down and transition it,” says Timothy Bond, Consultant, Launch Offshore, a London-based recruitment firm that reportedly places more than 100 foreign nationals from Europe and America in the Indian IT industry each year.

“The models for the future for the IT/BPO and telecom industries are being built in countries like India and China,” says Amitabh Sharma, the India-based consultant of the international placement firm, Egon Zhender. Admittedly for these sectors, the West is now a mature market, where growth is not only stagnating, but also fast approaching saturation. “There are very few companies in the West that operate at the kind of growth rate that is represented in India and China; there are also very few countries that have the kind of potential in terms of number that India and China offer,” adds Sharma.

“India is probably higher in the food chain in IT outsourcing. However, it is less developed in terms of infrastructure,” says Alan C.L. Choi, Regional Managing Director, Greater China, Korn/Ferry International, an executive search firm. “Employees tend to naturally flow to sectors or geographies where there is a mismatch between supply and demand, and it is true that there is a huge gap in both India and China, between the skills sets sought and what is available locally.”

Alan C.L. Choi Regional MD Greater China, Korn/Ferry International

“India is probably higher in the food chain in IT outsourcing. However, it is less developed in terms of infrastructure.”

Almost 90% of the over 100,000 foreign nationals in Shanghai (and Beijing where most foreign nationals in China are concentrated) are working in management and IT.

The Indian IT sector, on the other hand, currently employs about 30,000 foreign nationals, about three times the number it had two years back, according to Nasscom, the country’s association for software and services companies. Evalueserve, an India-based BPO that claims to have kick-started the trend of employing expatriate workers in the Indian IT sector, estimates that the Indian offshoring industry will create 160,000 vacancies by 2010 just for foreign-language professionals. Of these, not more than 40,000 vacancies can be filled by Indians with foreign-language specialization, requiring foreign nationals to work from India.