Han Digital recently concluded an research on hiring trends – ‘2018 India IT/BPM Hiring Outlook‘, a study that sought to help leaders understand the talent availability for technology skills and use the insights in hiring decisions.
Talent acquisition teams are witnessing increased incidences of hiring for digital skills with increased digital technology adoption. Han Digital’s research shows that, the share of demand for disruptive technology skills are growing rapidly in the past three years across Tier I and emerging cities in India. In 2014, the job demand and growth of digital technology skills were less than 15% of overall hiring and has almost doubled to 28% in 2017. For 2018, it is estimated to be in the region of 35%.
Top digital niche skills are Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), DevOps, UI/UX, Blockchain, Machine Learning (ML), Information Security (InfoSec), Ecommerce, Data Science/Big Data, Python, Cloud, Industrial Robotics, 5G, 3D printing, etc. These are hot demanding technologies being evolving faster among Indian Information Technology (IT) and Business Process Management (BPM) companies. Over the next two years, Re-inventing/Reskilling the existing talent pool at a larger scale by the industry is the way to tackle the talent demand-supply situation in India.
The 3 hot digital skills
Among the above list of hot skills, Han Digital identified Robotic Process Automation (RPA), DevOps and UI/UX as the top 3 skills in 2017 by demand and growth. Demand for these skills will continue to increase in 2018 as well. Among the overall talent pool of 25,000+ professionals, talent demand concentrated heavily with Tier I & II IT services and Global In-house (GIC)/Captive companies which contribute more than 65% of the demand every quarter.
“Based on last 3 hiring quarters, DevOps, RPA and UI/UX are the top 3 digital skills in hot demand. Most businesses/project teams face skill maturity gap among available talent – a major challenge while trying to bridge customer expectations,” said Saravanan Balasundaram, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Han Digital Solution.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is playing a critical role by improving the effectiveness of service at any back office transactional activities. More than 150 organizations in India established RPA practices on Automation AnyWhere, BluePrism and UiPath skill sets. The RPA talent market grew at 34% in last 12 months through aggressive reskilling and training by large system integrators. As on 31 December 2017, Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune/Mumbai Region were the largest talent pools, driving hiring for RPA with average salary increases of 27%.
DevOps demand spiked with tools such as Chef, Puppet, Jenkins etc., with companies set for cultural adoption to play lean and agile software delivery. Over 5,000 strong DevOps professionals are available in India and 70% of them have been cross-trained from basic build and release engineering in the last two years. As on 31 December 2017, Bengaluru, Pune/Mumbai and NCR were the largest talent pools, driving hiring for DevOps with average salary increases of 35%.
“Market Perception and role of DevOps differs among services organizations, product captives, Global In-house Centers (GIC) and tech start-ups. However, the need for DevOps skill mix and expectations will continue to grow even in 2018,” said Pranab Sen, Co-founder of ResearchFox, a leading business research and advisory firm.
UI/UX is one of the fastest growing skills when it comes to hiring demand. IT Services and Captive companies are attracting this talent pool on a large scale. This includes talent skilled in HTML, CSS with JavaScript (AngularJS, ReactJS, etc.). 7,000+ UI/UX professionals available are at mid-experience levels. As on 31 December 2017, Bengaluru, NCR and Pune/Mumbai were the largest talent pools, driving hiring for UI/UX with average salary increases of 32%. Rising demand and higher than market-median salary leads to an average employee stint of two years in the market.
