Higher attrition driving higher increments as recruiters anticipate churn, says Naukri Hiring Survey

Higher attrition across functional areas and experience bands will drive a better increment for job seekers in the coming months. As per the Naukri Hiring Outlook Survey 2022 recruiters across the country are indicating a strong hiring sentiment for the first half of 2022. In fact, 40 per cent are expecting average increments to be over 15 per cent and only 6 per cent are expecting to roll out an increment below 5 per cent.

Naukri Hiring Outlook Survey 2022 revealed that 57 per cent of recruiters indicated both new and replacement hiring in their organizations in the coming months till June'22 vis-a-vis 51 per cent in last year's survey. Interestingly, 62 per cent of the recruiters expect the hiring to go back to pre-COVID levels in their organizations by June 2022.

With digital transformation shaping the future of work, the demand for tech-enabled skills is witnessing a consistent uptick. As per Naukri Hiring Outlook Survey, the top functional areas in which active hiring is expected in the coming months are IT (59 per cent), Business Development (43 per cent), and Marketing (36 per cent).

From an experience standpoint, recruiters foresee maximum hiring to take place for the experience band of 3-5 years (67 per cent), followed by 1-3 years (53 per cent), and 5-8 years (53 per cent).

Some of the other interesting sentiments from recruiters were:

High attrition rate ahead: The job market has been hot in the last few months, and as a result, recruiters expect attrition to rise further in the coming months. The majority of this attrition is expected from employees in the experience bracket of 3-5 years (51 per cent), followed by 1-3 years (45 per cent). Given the continued surge in demand for IT roles, recruiters expect this sector to witness a high employee fallout rate of 49 per cent. It is interesting to note that the number of recruiters anticipating an attrition rate greater than 20 per cent grew up by 33 per cent when compared with the previous survey conducted last year.

Increments are on the charts: As per the survey findings, the number of recruiters planning to roll out increments greater than 30 per cent in their respective organizations grew substantially by 60% versus the previous outlook survey conducted in July'21. It's great news for employees as the economy continues to normalize and household consumption is expected to grow. At the same time, the number of recruiters foreseeing an increment below 10 per cent reduced from 37 per cent to 33 per cent.

Campus hiring to be back on track: The campus hiring is showing signs of improvement since last year. In the previous survey, the majority of recruiters had put campus hiring on hold while this time majority of recruiters expect campus hiring to go as planned. 47 per cent of recruiters confirm going ahead with the placements in the next few months while only 16 per cent feel that there may be a reduction in the number of candidates that will be hired from campus.

Changing workplace models: Indian companies are gearing to kickstart work from the office for their employees with 41 per cent of recruiters confirming the same, which marks a significant increase of 10 per cent when compared with the previous year's survey for the period July-Dec'21. 42 per cent of recruiters believe that working from home is equally productive as working in the office while around 14 per cent of recruiters said they would be back to the office with a restricted team size.

Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri.com, said "The anticipation of returning to normalcy by companies is fuelling a strong hiring sentiment as there has been a pent-up demand across sectors. Naukri Hiring Outlook Survey corroborates this narrative as 57 per cent of recruiters indicated a surge in both new and replacement hiring in their organizations. Only 2 per cent of recruiters foresee a hold on hiring, while just 1 per cent indicate layoffs for the coming months which indicates re-stabilization after a turbulent period."

Methodology

Naukri Hiring Outlook is a bi-annual survey conducted amongst recruiters and recruitment consultants aimed at gauging hiring trends across companies and industries. The survey covers multiple aspects of job creation trends/forecasts as well as jobseeker behaviour covering areas like job opportunities and increments amongst other areas. 1879 recruiters and consultants representing over 10 major sectors participated in this edition of the Hiring Outlook. Responses from the participants were collected online using a detailed questionnaire. The data received from the process was analyzed to present meaningful trends and insights.