The corporate workforce has seen its fair share of chaos attributing to the COVID-19 crisis that has altered the traditional ways of doing business across different sectors. A recent study by CareerNet, titled Present Hiring Outlook in India and the Future of Work, cites that 8 out of 10 employers are actively hiring, while only 6 per cent of the employers haven’t re-started hiring yet.
The report suggests that 61 per cent of large enterprises anticipate filling more than 500 positions, 45 per cent of mid-sized companies expect to fill between 100 and 500 positions, and 61 per cent of small businesses forecast to fill less than 50 positions in the year 2021.
Employers in the Banking, eCommerce, Insurance & Financial Services, and IT/ITeS sectors expect their hiring numbers to be higher as compared with those in other sectors. Among cities, Hyderabad tops the list of employment, with 100 per cent of respondents saying that they are actively hiring. 80 per cent of employers in Bangalore are considering hiring, whereas 5 per cent have not started hiring yet.
The culture of remote working has instigated the significance of functional skills over soft skills while evaluating candidates. 3 out of 4 employers consider functional skills to be extremely important, less than a half of them consider soft skills to be extremely important. Additionally, across industry verticals, there’s a significant demand for technology-based talent. The rapid adoption of digitisation by companies and growing consumption of technology amid the pandemic has led to a growth in the demand for coders, programmers, and software developers, with 69 per cent of recruiters looking for technology-based talent.
Two out of three employers are seeking candidates with good communication skills and 50 per cent of them rate interpersonal skills on top while assessing candidates. Other in-demand soft skills are self-discipline, multi-tasking, time management, and work-life balance.
“A few months into 2021 got us thinking about the present hiring outlook of employers in India. We did this study to gather market insights about the present hiring trends and the evolving work model,” said Anshuman Das, CEO and Co-Founder, CareerNet. “The study witnessed participation from over 80 leaders in the Human Resources and Talent Acquisition space and over 1,600 employees from various organisations. The report reveals some interesting insights. The hiring momentum has accelerated and companies are actively hiring. For colleges and universities, virtual hiring is going to be the norm. There is a positive outlook towards gig/contractual/freelance hiring,” he added.
