July brings cheer to job seekers; V-shaped revival likely in employment if trend continues | Economic Times

MUMBAI: Is India seeing a sharp recovery in the jobs market? Early indicators in July suggest green shoots in some employment segments with a rise in active and fresh openings following on from a trough in June. For the first time in four months, the Indian job market has seen an increase in open positions with close to 150,000 listed in July, going by data from official company pages on LinkedIn and direct postings on top job boards. That’s a recovery from June, which saw a dip in jobs to 130,000 open positions from 200,000 in April and 167,000 in May, according to an analysis by specialist staffing firm Xpheno for ET. Nearly 65% of these active openings in July were either published or refreshed over the last two weeks, another indicator of companies resuming hiring activity after a pause during the lockdown to control Covid-19 and the consequent economic slump. Early July data show all sectors are adding active openings to listings by 12-18% from June levels. 77211157“If the trend continues for the rest of July and sustains for August, we will be possibly looking at the first V-shaped recovery graphs in the job market,” said Xpheno cofounder Kamal Karanth. Prominent employers with active openings for the month include Accenture India, Wells Fargo, IBM, Mphasis, Citi, Wipro, Infosys, Capgemini and Amazon India, the data showed. Health tech, ed tech, ecommerce and healthcare are on the leader board for now among sectors that nearly dodged the slowdown or registered a quick recovery. The early recovery sectors where hiring activity is rising faster than others are automobiles, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), retail, energy and pharmaceuticals, showed the data. “Pharma and healthcare have started showing green shoots of recovery… Once the lockdown is lifted by various governments, this is one sector that will show a sharp V-shaped revival,” said Yashwant Mahadik, president, global HR, Lupin. “We are hiring for all critical functions like marketing, sales, manufacturing, quality and R&D.” India imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 25 with restrictions being eased in stages from May. However, localised disease outbreaks have forced states to implement shutdowns in these areas.“Nearly 100+ new hires and 90+ summer interns have joined the company recently,” said PM Srinivas, head of human resources for Procter & Gamble in the Indian subcontinent. “We are also continuing to accept and process applications for full-time job opportunities.”GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare is hiring people for the field, sales and digital departments. “We are continuing with our hiring plans and will continue to strengthen our teams in field force, digital and ecommerce,” said Priyank Parakh, director, human resources, GSK Consumer Healthcare. “In fact, we continued to export talent from India into roles abroad and have hired new people to fill in the vacancies.” The top hiring sectors continue to be software, internet-enabled services, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and information technology (IT) services. They were hiring even during the lockdown and have accelerated now.“Our client interactions suggest sentiment is getting better, especially in sectors such as consumer goods, retail, healthcare, pharma and ecommerce,” said Anurag Malik, partner, people advisory services, EY India. The most-advertised IT positions are project/programme managers, tech leads, software engineers, cloud solution architects, automation specialists, full stack developers and security specialists. The most advertised non-IT positions are business development managers, presales executives/pre-sales managers and marketing specialists. Close to 44% of active openings for the month are from the top five metropolitan cities. Bengaluru leads the pack with 18% of the openings. Hyderabad follows with 8%, Chennai at 7%, Delhi at 6% and Mumbai continuing to trail at 5%. Hyderabad registered the biggest growth in active openings in July, toppling Delhi to take the second position on the listing.