Once the COVID-19 dust settles down, a new order will emerge in the job market, analysts say. Several new jobs in the field of health and hygiene and technology may come up.
According to HR firms, gaming, over-the-top (OTT) services, work-from-home virtual team, project management software, e-commerce and edutech segments would see a steady increase in business.
“There will be hot jobs in these sectors,” Francis Padamadan, senior director, RPO & BPS Practice, APAC, KellyOCG, said.
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“Virtual medical tourism could take off to provide psychological aid and faster therapeutic healing to patients. Services and health sectors will see a spike,” he said. He said there will be increased demand for contract employees across delivery services, fulfilment centres and contact centres to manage and support disaster management activities, sanitisation and cleaning work. But companies will have full-time employees in their core areas and across IT digital skills, online marketing and content writing.
Experts said a gig economy, a labour market characterised by prevalence of short-term work contracts and freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs, will be institutionalised post the COVID-19 mayhem .
“COVID-19 will strengthen the gig economy which was slowly making an entry. One will have to strengthen one’s core offering to find jobs. People will be available for say 20 hours a month for some specific work,” Binno Joseph, XLRI alumnus and founder, Peometry Consulting, and director at Impetus360 (ODwiz Enablers Pvt. Ltd.) said.
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He said a lot of self-employed people will be picking up assignments for a fee, while millennials will go for companies providing superior experience as their approach to life is different than older generations.
“In the future, full-time jobs will be fewer. The new normal will be completely different from what the job market used to be,” Mr. Joseph said.
Now, companies are looking at hiring the right talent and using the existing resources for business continuity, analysts said.
Microbiology and bio-technology, as segments, are expected to take off, as every organisation would require the services of such people to advise and sensitise staff on microbes and how to deal with infections.
Such people will also be required for research by pharmaceutical companies, they added.
Jyoti Bowen Nath, managing partner, Claricent Partners said, “While start-ups and small to mid-sized companies have been badly hit by the crisis, the large cash-rich business houses are also facing the brunt.”
“Most have gone on a hiring freeze, while many have revoked offers made to candidates. Campus offers have been put on hold and similar stories are seen across the globe,” she said.
However, pharma, medical equipment companies, and the whole digital and e-commerce segments are possibly the new ‘sunrise’ sectors as they are the need of the hour, she added.
“These are where the opportunities will be. Companies will need to quickly reinvent themselves and come up with new revenue streams. Service providers will need to come up with innovative offerings as well as pricing points,” she added.
According to data from Indeed, job-seekers in India have shown greater interest in working in healthcare over the course of the past year (February 2019 to February 2020), with the number of job searches seeing an increase of 5% during this period.
Sashi Kumar, MD, Indeed India said, “As the job market slows down in the wake of a global pandemic, essential services such as medical and public health continue to drive demand. Despite the slump in the sector, healthcare continues to be one of the foremost drivers of economic growth.”