Expertspeak: Increased hiring to continue

INDIA INC. and the government have much to pat themselves on the back for. The GDP has grown 7.4% during the second half of 2015. Both hiring volumes and budgets have gone up. Compared to 2014, 18% more people got hired in 2015. Budgets went up 15% in 2015.

Internet job boards have become the most soughtafter source for volume hiring, followed by company websites, internal hires and professional social networks. The number of Indian firms leveraging social recruiting has doubled over the past one year. These social networks have become the preferred hubs for employer branding and platforms for employee engagement.

On the other hand, layoffs have been increasing at a rate of about 9% per quarter. However, companies are not shying away from retaining talent. As many as 30% of Indian employers have increased employee benefits in a bid to retain talent. The most popular benefits include company leased and employee-owned cars, leave encashments and insurance.
At 22%, e-commerce will witness the highest net hiring growth followed by IT (13.7%), retail (13.4%) and pharma (12.6%). Some of the key functional areas in the technology sector that will see the highest demands are statistical analysis and data mining, social media marketing, algorithm design, storage systems and management, cloud and distributed computing, user-interface design and data presentation.

With more than 3,100 startups, India saw the highest number of startups being founded in the world in 2015. Startup salaries offered to graduates of premier institutions went up 120% over the past one year. Bengaluru is the hottest job location with over 30% increase in demand, followed by NCR at 22%.

The payments industry has been revolutionised by technology and many startups as well as incumbents are joining it. Startups, mobile telephony operators and most banks are participating in an ecosystem that is set to make payments hi-tech and generate thousands of jobs for technology and frontline sales professionals.

Sales and marketing has added some new areas which are picking up in demand, besides frontline sales. Professionals in digital and online marketing, market research and insights and SEO/SEM marketing are in high demand. Profiles in the retail services and hospitality domains saw a 30% spike in demand. This trend is expected to continue. Media jobs are also emerging as vastly popular, particularly in the area of public relation and communications, public policy and international relations.