Hiring Outlook Positive As GDP Grows: Suchita Dutta, Indian Staffing Federation

In an interaction with BW People, Suchita Dutta, Executive Director, Indian Staffing Federation talks about the job market, recruitment policies, and hiring at different job levels.   

What is the current job market scenario? What industries and sectors are looking good for hiring?

The current job scenario in India heralds a constructive and progressive outlook. BFSI, Retail, Logistics, IT/ITES, e-commerce, start-ups, consumer goods, and real estate, healthcare will see the most extreme development in 2019, as these are contributing divisions to the nation's GDP. A huge piece of India is still unbanked and protection infiltration still exceptionally less-so all money related administrations are excited about tapping the undiscovered section – which will see them adventure into non-metro markets. Essentially, retail would profit by expanded customer spending in Tier-II-III markets which would, in turn, drive employment in India's non-metros and smaller towns. Expanded spends on the foundation – which is critical to India's development will prompt employment creation crosswise over India. With US-Visa concerns, back end engineering for IT/ITes will be routed to India increasing job prospects here. The E-commerce business growth, increased start-ups funding and the adoption of AI & automation to professionalize operations, will keep driving the demand for talent, accelerating job opportunities further. 

How has recruitment policies changed with new skills coming up?

With more businesses adopting disruptive technology like AI, Automation to better operational functionalities, the demand for fitting newer job profiles has proliferated. IT has become a candidate’s market and recruiters are essentially focusing on industry-ready candidates with multi-skill expertise. Talent acquisition has become more complicated with more job opportunities in line and less supply of able talent in the market. At a time when it has become critical to helping recruiters and talent attain their organizational and career goals, the role of flexi staffing has become more significant considering the range of flexibility, accessibility to new-age skills, cost-effectiveness, meaningful hires and such range of support that it can render. In a job market where talent is scarce, flexi staffing can help recruiters open access to meaningful hires who can be moved onto permanent roles later.  

Although the Indian economy is growing more than twice as fast as the rest of the world its job creation and employment story shows a reverse stature. Over 30 percent of Indians aged 15-29 years are neither in employment nor in education and training (Source: OECD Report). Hence, Government’s intervention is crucial right now and necessarily in measures like leadership training for women, diversity training programs for corporates, mentor networks/programs, reconstruction of internal hiring operations.

How difficult is it to hire the right professionals meeting the employer requirements? How important is an apprenticeship for the job market?

Hiring the best fit is the greatest challenge for recruiters today due to the rising new age job profiles and rising candidate pool with inadequate skill sets. Even though the hiring outlook for India seems promising, the entire aspect of getting to meet truly employable people might be not. In India, the unemployment rate among youth is almost 13 percent (compared to 4.9 percent overall). Underemployment is even higher. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), there are currently nearly 31 million unemployed Indians. Due to the rising difficulty in talent acquisition recruiters are directing focus towards temp staffing over full time. Traditional search options are becoming obsolete and the market is having more passive job seekers than before is triggering the organizations to adopt experimental and innovative functionalities within their recruitment processes.  

Apprenticeship plans imply higher returns than most capital consumption plans. They could help firms raise efficiency. Apprenticeship provides a larger, productive, ready to deploy talent pool: creating the necessary human capital for businesses and helping them to invest in the future of our nation. The government should scale up Apprenticeship subsidy to encourage more adoption. No apprenticeship strategy will ring a death knell for employers, students and universities for the next decade. Engaging more employers in the system and improving the ‘branding’ of apprenticeships to individuals; improving the training standard through the improved curriculum, adding more highly qualified trainers, and a ‘dual’ approach to training throughout the apprenticeship is important. Besides, increasing the demand for apprenticeships by promoting greater permeability to higher-level qualifications and by encouraging employers to recruit apprentice-qualified workers is equally essential.

How is the hiring at the junior, mid and senior level? What level is the hardest to switch jobs?

Hiring activity is probably going to stay steady in 2019-20 as organizations will concentrate on substitution contracting pursued by new recruitments, giving chances to freshers. As per a survey by Genius Consultants, just about 58 percent of employers have a positive point of view towards hiring. About 46 percent of companies expect increment between 10 to 15 percent, whereas around 32 percent expect it to be between 5 to 10 percent and that cutbacks are also on the cards. Top IT firms are increasingly narrowing down their focus on hiring junior and entry-level talents and offering campus grads higher packages.  

Mid-level hiring has increased by 3 percent while there is a drop in entry-level hiring (by 5 percent), junior level (by 3 percent) and senior-level (by 4 percent), according to a report by Teamlease, a member of Indian Staffing Federation. The hiring of fresh graduates across sectors and cities is likely (Source: Eighth Hiring, Attrition, and Compensation Trend 2019-20. Nearly 16.3 percent of all net new jobs created during the April-September 2018-19.

Switching jobs at any level might prove hard if one is not adequately skilled. In fact, recruiters say a middle management-level employee can expect up to 50 percent jump in pay packet by joining a new company while junior-level employees will get 20-35 percent hikes, in a positive hiring market.