E-commerce players emerged as new recruiters in 2014

The year 2014 saw companies in emerging sectors such as e-commerce becoming favourites among job seekers as freshers as well as middle-level and senior managers joined companies like Flipkart , Amazon, Olacabs and Zomato.

Industry insiders say e-commerce companies are offering around Rs 10 lakh to Rs 25 lakh annual compensation coupled with other benefits that are way ahead of what jobs across other sectors offered. Start-ups flocked to campuses to recruit double the number of fresh graduates they did in 2013.

According to human resources consultancy Randstad India, hiring in the e-commerce sector is likely to rise by 20-30 per cent in next few years on the back of entry of domestic online start-ups and e-commerce multinationals into India, as also because of setting up of back-office operations for various global businesses.

Job creation has been one of the key agendas of the new government as one million youth enter our workforce every month. The year 2014 started on a sober note as businesses were uncertain about the future.

This reflected in their hiring, which stagnated and even declined in some cases. The overall net employment between October 2013 and March 2014 declined by three per cent. Hiring for entry and junior levels remained flat as companies were interested in engaging a more productive workforce.

Ashok Reddy, Managing Director & Co-Founder of staffing company TeamLease Services, says, "The second half of the year saw interesting turnaround in both hiring and business sentiments. Global macroeconomic trends coupled with the Lok Sabha election results put business and employment sentiments on a fast-paced upward trajectory. Business outlook took a leap of faith and grew by nine per cent while employment outlook growth was also equally fast at eight per cent. Job growth was expected to follow suit at a stupendous 12.8 per cent. However, how much of this will be achieved is uncertain."

Also, a large number of recruiters started using social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn extensively for hiring. The year also saw a lot of start-ups with interesting recruitment models. This varied from referral hiring platforms, social media management for hiring and niche databases/portals.

Sanjoe Jose, Co-founder of online video interview platform Talview.com, says,
"With the talent pool increasing in size day by day, unique challenges and solutions are also emerging. Video interviewing also became popular with organisations. A lot of them have started using multiple formats of video interviews like Asynchronous interview, Live Interviews and Video Proctored written assessments. Some used it for campus hiring while others use it for hiring distributed sales force or large scale lateral hiring."

Another trend that was observed was hiring of expats. While it started a few years ago, this year saw a lot of them joining across levels and roles.

Unlike previous years where this was driven by lack of job opportunities abroad, there is demand for people with cross-geography or niche experiences and they are motivated by the opportunity here.

The year saw many shifts across organistaions on employee benefit schemes, new employee retention measures, better workplaces, among others. At the end of the year, IT major Wipro India was reported to hand over its entire staff recruitment responsibilities to HR solution provider PeopleStrong.