Hiring at an 18-month high
There is good news for jobseekers in India. Companies across sectors are stepping up hiring. And the eerie lull in the job market at this time last year has given way to sustained hope for plentiful opportunities, the BT-TeamLease Employment Outlook Survey for the July-September 2010 quarter shows. Sample some of the findings.
Hiring sentiment for the quarter is at an 18-month high, with the Employment Outlook Index rising six percentage points to 64. The index depicts the difference between the percentage of respondents reporting an increase in hiring and those reporting a decline. This is the second successive quarter showing an increase in the index, which had remained more or less stagnant between July 2009 and March 2010, after recording a low hiring sentiment between January and June 2009. What's more, the ‘Not Hiring' category in the survey has dipped to a 12-month low at 12 per cent, falling eight percentage points.
Almost all sectors have contributed to the increased demand for talent. Healthcare and pharmaceuticals have recorded a slight decline in hiring, though. Infrastructure, with a 21 percentage point increase, manufacturing and engineering, and telecom, with 13 and 11 percentage point increases, respectively, have been the major contributors to the increase in the index value. Among cities, Delhi leads in hiring sentiment with a 19 percentage point increase in the index, followed by Mumbai and Ahmedabad with 14 percentage points each. Covering eight cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad — the survey drew responses from 568 companies (see Methodology).
Infrastructure Perks Up
The pick among the sectors this quarter is infrastructure. It has bounced back after a sharp dip of 33 percentage points in the previous quarter, while manufacturing and engineering has continued its dream run of sorts for the fourth quarter in succession. Telecom is seeing a healthy growth after three stagnant quarters.
METHODOLOGY Care was taken to ensure a good mix of large, medium and small companies as also an equitable representation across industries to remove any bias or variation that might be attributable to a particular industry. The target respondents at these companies were the HR heads or decision makers in the hiring process. A total of 568 interviews were conducted during May and June 2010 and responses obtained were coded at the time of data collection. Given the concentration of companies in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad, the study was restricted to companies with a presence in these cities. A random sampling was drawn from each city with due weightage to size. Two indices, the Employment Outlook Index and the Business Outlook Index, were computed to elaborate and analyse the trends that emerged from the data. |
New telecom services entrant Uninor, which is expanding its operations in northern India and entering new circles in this region, is looking to hire talent across functions, again with a big focus on sales and distribution. "We are actively looking for talent from sectors such as FMCG and consumer durables," says Kerstin Thulin, Executive Vice President for People and Organisation at Uninor.
The financial services sector has also stepped up hiring, recording an increase of seven percentage points this quarter. Motilal Oswal Financial Services, which hired approximately 400 people in the last two quarters, plans to add 300 to propel its business. Says Sudhir Dhar, Senior Vice President for Human Resources (HR) & Administration, "The uptick in hiring is due to a positive outlook on the stock markets. The bulk of our hiring is in sales and advisory."
Another player, Emkay Global Financial Services, has hired 300 people in the last two quarters and plans to add 100 in the July-September quarter, primarily in its retail and private wealth management verticals. Says Ruth Singh, Head of Human Resources at Emkay: "We are looking for relationship managers, dealers, financial advisors, and portfolio advisors." Anand Rathi, yet another financial services firm, plans to hire 250 in the current quarter. Hiring in healthcare and pharma has dipped marginally in the quarter, but this could well be a temporary setback.
"Several new projects have already been announced and both core and allied services in the sector are witnessing brisk hiring," says Kanika Vaswani, Executive Director, Elixir, an HR solutions firm. In fact, some HR heads like A. Lakshminarayana, General Manager at NATCO Pharma, believe that the sector is facing a talent shortage. "There is a scarcity of right competencies in quality control, regulatory affairs and analytical R&D," he says.
IT is Robust
With the good times returning, information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services companies are restarting their hiring engines. Companies across the board — services, products, multinationals and home-grown — have begun scouting for talent. Leading the way is sector bellwether Infosys Technologies, which has already hired some 30,000 in the current financial year, including some 2,000 people in China, where its operations have broken even.
T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director of Facilities and Administration at Infosys, says the company will focus on increasing its visibility in overseas markets, especially in the lucrative West European and North American geographies. Infosys and companies such as mid-tier vendor MphasiS have launched drives to re-hire former employees. "We plan to grow at 16-18 per cent this year and our hiring needs to keep pace with this," says Pai.
HR consultants, too, agree that the pace of hiring has picked up. According to Ajit Isaac, Managing Director of Ikya Human Capital Solutions, a Bangalore-based HR solutions provider, the recovery in India Inc. is reflected in the strong hiring across the IT industry. "Most companies have internalised hiring in the last two years and they're focussing on improving the quality of talent in the 6-10 year experience bracket," he says.
Jeya Kumar, CEO of mid-tier Patni Computer Systems, says the company will hire across functions such as infrastructure management, business process outsourcing services and application development. "We also expect to improve utilisation levels this year and a reduction in bench levels," he adds. Unlike its peers, Patni plans to expand into smaller cities such as Gandhinagar, Noida and Pune.
Junior and entry-level talent is now finding favour among employers, indicating that volume hiring could well be anticipated over the next three months. Hiring at these levels is expected to make a strong comeback with an increase of 17 and 11 percentage points, respectively, in hiring intent — the biggest rise after more than 24 months of stagnant or negative growth in index value.
Focus on Youth
This, however, has cut significantly into mid-level hiring, although the sheer weight of sentiment in favour of junior and entry levels more than makes up for the mid-management cutback.
Auto sector players such as Rane Group, a components conglomerate with a turnover of Rs 1,500 crore, have begun hiring at the entry level. "Need-based hiring is happening in middle and senior levels, too, and sometimes this is lateral," says Exe c u t ive Vi c e P r e s i d e n t R. Venkatanarayanan. Ford India, too, is upbeat on the business outlook. "Hiring has never been low. Now we are hiring even more to take care of the second shift," says Dhananjay Nair, General Manager, HR, Ford India. Uninor seems to be an exception and is looking for talent at the midmanagement level.
To meet talent requirements, companies are looking well beyond the urban markets. Legal process outsourcing firm Pangea3 is hiring entry level talent from Tier-II and III cities that are home to top law colleges. "More than 30 per cent of our employees are hired from law schools based in Tier-II towns such as Faridabad, Goa, Jodhpur, Baroda, Ranchi, Chandigarh, Indore and Bhopal," says Sanjay Kamlani, Co-CEO, Pangea3.
What's next? The positive hiring story is likely to continue over the next quarter. Says Sangeeta Lala, Vice President, Sourcing, TeamLease Services: "We are seeing positive hiring intentions over the past few months and are expecting this to continue."
