8 out of 10 employers are actively hiring now: CareerNet Market Study

New Delhi: 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% of the employers haven’t re-started hiring yet.

The report suggests that 61% of large enterprises anticipate filling more than 500 positions, 45% of mid-sized companies expect to fill between 100 and 500 positions, and 61% 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% of respondents saying that they are actively hiring. 80% of employers in Bangalore are considering hiring, whereas 5% 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 digitization 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% of recruiters looking for technology-based talent.

2 out of 3 employers are seeking candidates with good communication skills and 50% 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 organizations. 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.

Campus hiring:
While 43% of small companies (up to 500 employees) are not planning to hire from campuses this year, 59% of mid-sized companies (501-5,000 employees) and 64% of the large enterprises (5,001+ employees) are planning to recruit campus talent. 16% of small companies, 18% of mid-sized ones and 36% of the large enterprises are not sure about campus hiring this year. IT/ITES, Banking, and Pharmaceuticals are some of the sectors that are going to move ahead with virtual campus hiring this year. Among the organisations that are planning to lead with campus hiring, 47% expect hiring for less than 50 positions while 12% predict between 51 and 100 positions.

Employee attrition:
1 in 4 employers is witnessing their employee attrition rate to be either at an all-time high or higher than the quarter ended in Dec ’20. One in three organisations is experiencing either the same rate or a higher rate of employee attritions as compared with the year ended in Dec ’20. 22% of the employers stated that their employee attrition rate is at an all-time low. From the employees’ point of view, 8 out of 10 working professionals across the country are considering changing their jobs this year.

Other findings:

• While nearly half of the organisations are considering hiring freelance workers for this year, 2 out of 3 candidates do not prefer contract/freelance jobs
• About 67% of the organisations are anticipating a combination of work-from-home and work-from-office after the pandemic passes by. Whereas only 4% want to go for a complete remote working model. 25% of employers expect up to 25% of their employees to operate remotely when offices completely reopen
• The 2 major challenges the HR function faces are employee retention and engagement
• The measures organisations are taking to address the issue of employee attrition is monitoring work-life balance and offering rewards and growth opportunities