Representing the views of 150+ organisations and 250+ campuses across multiple industries and tiers, Deloitte’s second annual Campus Workforce Trends Survey 2022 provide insights into the compensation being expected by students at campuses and organisations offerings along with the preference and hiring trends. The study also seeks to provide insights to help organizations build and develop their campus strategy and assess the ground realities of compensation.
Here are the key highlights:
- Digital skills take pole position: Amongst corporates, there is a growing demand for niche skills, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), machine learning, and artificial intelligence, but campuses lack these skills at the time of demand. The top skills at campuses only show a partial fulfilment of this demand, with iOS/Android development, digital marketing and market access, material sciences/R&D, and financial risk management featuring prominently.
Commenting on the topic, Anubhav Gupta, Partner, Deloitte India said, “While industry-academia partnerships keep getting stronger every year, they are not embedded at the course level (some may be, but not institutionalised yet). This translates into long campus to corporate orientation programmes (three months to over one year) – sometimes also becoming the cause for infant attrition. What is important is for academia to take initiative beyond the placement office and identify skills that are required at work and translate it into the academic curriculum. This will enable real impact and plug and play talent.”
- The war for talent: The survey reveals that amongst MBA specialisations, the consulting/services industry offers the highest pay differential to students specialising in banking and financial services and finance, followed by marketing and business analytics. On the other hand, students of entrepreneurship and family business get offered the lowest pay with the FMCG/FMCD industry, followed by the IT/ITeS industry. Furthermore, IT/ITes takes the top spot as preferred industry amongst students as it offers top payouts to the more relevant engineering stream specialisations of data science and AI, followed by computer science.
- Hiring strategies of organisations: While fifty-four percent companies have gone back to offline onboarding, 36% still continue with virtual onboarding
- Differential rates of attrition: The Indian IT sector has been facing an especially high rate of attrition (between 15-25%). As more enterprises in India and abroad recognise the need for IT modernisation, demand for skilled workers is pushing up pay and prompting Indian IT services firms to increase the cost of digital projects for their clients. Infant attrition, as well as two-year attrition is highest amongst candidates from BBA/BMS streams (35% and 45% respectively), while one-year attrition is highest amongst candidates from BE/BTech (46%).
Speaking on the topic, Neelesh Gupta, Director, Deloitte India said, “this pay-driven war for talent is primarily on account of the technology boom, as well as the changing preferences of young talent (flex, hybrid, on-site). One can expect this wave to last a few cycles before a reverse trend starts. While that happens, the pay budgets for fresher/young talent of organisations are expected to swell to near unsustainable levels.”
- The desire for security: Sixty-seven percent of students prefer working with large companies (greater than 1,000 employers) and ~46% specifically with the public sector, with job security being the primary motivator.
- Compensation trends: The study shows a gap between payouts expected by campuses and those delivered by corporates as for the top 10 MBA colleges, the median CTC less long-term benefits actuals were lower than expected (25,41,000 v. 27,58,000), whereas for tier 1 colleges, this was higher than expected (21,93,000 v. 21,49,000).
Commenting on the trends of the total reward amongst campus hires, Anubhav Gupta, Partner, Deloitte India, said that there’s a very good salary growth (15% - 25% depending on streams) for freshers from the pre-pandemic levels. This indicates focus by employers on the ‘build talent from within’ strategy. However, an increasing share of variable pay in the rewards package, as well its increasing penetration, indicates that performance orientation is becoming a priority for employers from day one. What remains to be ascertained over the next few quarters is the work from anywhere/on-site dilemma. Organisations are split in their views, and it will be interesting to witness which one prevails in the long run.
- Location trends: Post introduction of hybrid/work from anywhere models, this trend is witnessing a surge and is likely to be a game changer in how work happens/jobs are constructed. The preference of students is to either go for metropolitan cities or their home location, translating into a metro dominance and recent upswing of tier-2 cities, albeit small.
