Janie James says she was cool at first when Indian outsourcing giant Infosys Ltd. approached her about a job near Atlanta, even though she was unemployed. She didn't know much about the company, and it seemed a step down from her old vice-president post at Primerica Inc.

In the end, she decided she could use experience gleaned from her work at life insurer Primerica and another stint at a financial investment company to help Infosys build its insurance outsourcing business. Now James is an operations manager at the Bangalore, India, company's first predominantly U.S.-staffed center, which opened in April.

“They saw this was a city with a lot of people who were out of work and had the skills they needed for this center,” she said. “Anything that can be done to decrease unemployment is a great thing.”