2018 to see higher recruitment: Survey

Hyderabad: With recruitment seeing a steady rise in the last quarter of the preceding year, the recruitment market appears to be well on the way to recovering from the recession it faced in the first half of 2017. Wisdomjobs.com,one of India’s leading end to end online recruitment and career solutions portals, released a Report “Hiring Pattern and Compensation Analysis in 2018”.

1. 30 per cent of the companies will be recruiting with a specific intention of countering the threat from startups in their industry
2. 60 per cent of companies will be hiring more women; 40% to hire candidates in the experience range 
of 2 to 5 years
3. 30 per cent recruiters expect IT sector to see the largest hiring this year; 60% believe compensation rising at the junior and middle levels

It surveyed 140 companies and 350+ recruiters operating in 10 sectors namely IT, Retail, Hospitality, FMCG, Healthcare, Automobiles, Infrastructure, Education, ITeS, and BFSI to understand their hiring intentions. The markets covered under the survey are Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.

With the industry managing to ride out the impacts of demonetisation, the revision in H1B regulations, and the implementation of GST, the sentiments are positive w.r.t hiring activity in 2018. Sectors like Agriculture, Education and Healthcare sectors, which saw healthy hiring trends in 2017, are expected to continue growing steadily. 

As companies try hard to retain existing talent, they will invest more on their skill development, upskilling, and training. Several companies are upskilling their workforces by hiring laterally while others are focusing on hiring fresher talent and training them to acquire new, in-demand skills.

Key findings

• Around 60% of the companies surveyed said that they plan to hire in significant numbers this year.
• Nearly 30% of the companies said they will be recruiting with a specific intention of countering the threat from startups in their industry.
• 52% of the companies said they will hire majorly from metro cities, and Tier I cities.
• 58% of companies surveyed plan to invest up to 10% of their HR budgets on skill development and training of their existing employees while nearly 10% of them plan on investing more than 20% of their budgets on the same.
• Nearly 60% of companies surveyed said that they are looking at hiring more women this year.
• 45% of companies said they will be reviewing the compensation and benefits offered by them; 32% said they will be focusing on employee retention, and 27% said they will focus on creating a better workplace.Industry-wise trends
• Nearly 30% of recruiters surveyed said that the IT sector will see the largest hiring this year.
• 22% felt that the Engineering sector would see a rise in hiring.
• 19% of recruiters estimated that the Infrastructure sector would bring more jobs.

Functional areas in demand

• Nearly 28% of respondents said that Sales/Business Development will be the most in-demand functional area in 2018.
• 24% said that Marketing would be the most in-demand functional area this year.Demand by experience range
• Nearly 40% of companies surveyed said that they plan to hire candidates in the experience range of 2 to 5 years in 2018.
• 29% of companies said they will hire candidates with an experience range of 5-10 years in 2018. Compensation trends
• Nearly 54% of the companies surveyed said that compensation is likely to stay the same while 39% said compensation is likely to grow this year. Less than 5% said that it will see a decline.
• Nearly 60% said that compensation would rise at the junior and middle levels 
• “Millenial hiring is expected to proceed aggressively with the creation of a multitude of openings for new age technologies in the IT and Technology sectors. Sectors such as Manufacturing, ITeS, Transport, and Hospitality, which saw a fall in hiring in 2017, are also expected to make a partial recovery this year.”
• Ajay Kolla Founder & CEO, Wisdomjobs.com