After
a lull in recent years, India's labour market is enjoying a burst of activity,
as euphoria over a new government; a booming stock market and improved business
sentiment are encouraging employers to hire in a big way.
Salaries in
recent months have gone up by up to 60 percent compared to last year in some
industries with perks like sign-on bonuses, stock options and even counter
offers making a comeback, experts told CNBC.
"The
negativity surrounding India's political scene is gone," said Dony
Kuriakose, director, EDGE Executive Search. "Hiring seems to be part of a
long-term plan for India."
The sentiment is
a sea change from just a year ago, when the Fed taper tantrum sparked an
outflow of funds from emerging markets including India, causing local stock
markets and the India rupee to plummet. This coupled with policy paralysis as
the government prepared for polls created a negative business environment
forcing employers to cut costs and axe jobs.
Hitesh Oberoi,
CEO of Info Edge, the owner of job site Naukri.com, has seen a
20 percent year on year hike in hiring activity in July, after a tough five to
six quarters. "Over the next few years India is going to have a good
run," he said.
At BITS Pilani
University, one of India's premier engineering colleges, there has been a 38
percent year on year increase in the number of employers visiting its three
Indian campuses during the placement season that begins in August, including
high profile names like Goldman Sachs to eBay and Shlumberger.
Salaries offered
have raised between 7 percent and 42 percent, according to G Balasubramanian,
chief placement officer of BITS.
IT,
e-Commerce: We are hiring!
Positioned a
tech hub, it's not surprising that the hiring frenzy in India is most
pronounced in the e-commerce and IT related sectors. The country's e-commerce
industry has been on an expansion drive with investors pouring in close to $2
billion in this sector this year alone, while IT services, which hires an
estimated 150,000 fresh graduates every year, has benefited from the
depreciation of the rupee and improving demand in western countries.
And often,
salary is not a consideration in a bid to attract the best talent. One of
India's largest e-commerce companies recently paid a million dollars to hire a
chief technology officer, industry sources told CNBC. The 38-year-old relocated
to India after 10 years in the U.S., as such salaries are "not normal even
in America."
New Delhi-based
online restaurant guide Zomato.com is struggling to fill positions at its
rapidly-expanding firm. The six-year-old start-up is currently present in 13
countries and 100 cities and wants to expand to 10 new international markets
within the next five years.
"We are
scaling up...at the moment we are just 1 percent of where we want to be,"
Zomato's regional director Upasana Nath told CNBC, adding that the firm is
adjusting salaries upwards by up to 60 percent for certain roles. "If we
have more people we can expand more; we are hiring heavily."
It's a sentiment
shared by India's leading online marketplace Flipkart.com, which received a
whopping $1 billion from investors in July. The firm is planning to increase
its technology team three-fold by the middle of next year. "We have grown
100 times in the last three years and we don't see any signs of slowing
down," chief placement officer Mekin Maheswari told CNBC.
Non-tech
also benefitting
The job creation
among Internet companies may be at a frenetic pace, but hiring in traditional
sectors like banking and telecommunications is also picking up. According to
the Naukri Job Speak Index, a monthly report on hiring activity in India, there
has been a near 25 percent year on year uptick in hiring in the banking and
telecom sectors in July.
Thirty-five-year-old
Delhi-based banker Anubhav Gupta has been looking to change jobs since 2008 and
his search has just ended. The MBA-degree holder with 12 years of work
experience finally landed a new role recently with another financial
institution with a "minor" increase in salary."Things are
looking slightly better now, hopefully my next job shift won't take so
long," he said.
Hiring
executives also point to areas like R&D and life sciences where foreign
investment is coming in after a lull period prior to the new government taking
over in May. "They [foreign companies] are all looking for country
managers and are offering salaries of close to $200,000 to people in their
30s," said Lakshmikanth of the Head Hunters.
Caution
ahead
It's worth
noting that the battle for talent is taking place in the below-40s segment of
the market, as the younger demographic have more relevant skills in the nouveau
tech space. This is leaving the older unemployed population out in the cold.
"It is
still a bad market for them...unless traditional companies in the engineering
and automobile spaces start hiring, many of them are still sitting at
home," said EDGE Executive's Kuriakose.
Other
recruitment experts warn that the current hiring buzz is owed largely to a few
industries. "There is a lot of excitement around just 10 internet
companies...how many can they alone hire? 500 management graduates?" said
Oberoi of Naukri.com.
And should the
economy suffer from external shocks much like the battering emerging markets
took last year, these tech firms - many which are built on foreign investment -
could see an exodus of funds, putting jobs on the line, experts warn.
But for
24-year-old Ravneet Kaur, who left her job with an established Indian design
label to join a digital fashion start-up, it's a risk she is happy to have
taken.
Armed with a
Masters degree in international media business from the University of Westminster,
Kaur says the excitement of being in a growth industry far outweighed the
"substantial salary hike" she got when making the shift. Kaur, whose
parents wanted her to stay on in London after her post graduation, chose to
come back to India where she says the action is. "E-commerce is such a new
thing in India, unexplored and I want to grow as the company grows," she
said.
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