Considering the unstable economic conditions and the low GDP growth, the hiring activity has shown an overall positive movement in the month of May. According to the Naukri Job speak index for May, India Inc is hiring at a stable rate. The index for the month grew by 10% as compared to the previous year. Also the hiring activity has maintained stable levels month on month.
The sectors that saw an increase in hiring activity are the auto and banking sectors which moved up by 4% and 8% respectively in May compared to April 2012. The construction, telecom and ITES sectors continued to witness dipping hiring figures over the last three months. Commenting on the trend, Hitesh Oberoi, Managing Director and CEO, Info Edge India said, “Concerns of a global economic crunch and rising inflationary pressures are acting as a caution sign for India Inc. Therefore, recruiters of some sectors are on a wait and watch mode. This does not mean that companies have frozen hiring, but they are certainly not going overboard.”
However, the monthly growth has been negligible due to the mixed hiring sentiment across sectors. The largest job creators the IT- Software and ITES have witnessed a marginal dip in hiring levels when compared to the previous month. This is fallout of the economic turmoil in the West which is affecting the Indian IT services sector; this is because these sectors mainly depend on the West for their business.
Coming to an industry-wise analysis of hiring trends, hiring activity has seen positive growth for the auto, oil and gas and banking sectors with the job speak index moving up by 8%, 6% and 3% respectively in May compared to April. The software services and pharma sector have seen stable hiring levels in May. On the contrary, construction, BPO and telecom sectors have been staggering with low hiring figures for the last few months and have seen a dip in hiring activity in the range of 4% and 9% in May when compared to April. The banking and financial sector witnessed the highest level of hiring at 7.6% when compared to other sectors.
The functional area analysis reveals that the demand for professionals in production and project management moved up by 4% in May when compared to April. Hiring of professionals in the IT software sector saw little activity in keeping with the hiring trend in the last few months. And for professionals in the BPO and HR domains, there was low hiring activity at 4% and 3% respectively in May when compared to April. However, professionals in the engineering (R&D), marketing and advertising and banking and insurance saw an increase in demand when compared to April.
Coming to a city-wise analysis of hiring trends, except for Chennai and Mumbai which saw an increase in hiring activity at 9% and 3% respectively, other cities saw a dip in hiring activity and hiring dipped in the range of 2% to 4% in May when compared to April. Tier 2 cities along with the metros also saw dips in their hiring activity during May. Surprisingly, Mumbai had the lowest hiring activity among the metros during May.
As for demand for professionals with different experience brackets, those with 8 to 12 years of experience saw a steady demand, professionals belonging to other experience brackets saw hiring pick up in the range of 2 to 4% in May compared to April. The highest demand was for professionals in the 4 to 7 years experience bracket.
The overall hiring scenario in May showed marginal increase in hiring as sectors are adopting a wait and watch policy and are monitoring their hiring activity based on the global economic situation.
Hema Gopalakrishnan
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