The slowdown that had hit the job market badly last year is a thing of the past. Companies are making a beeline back to campuses. “Recruitment from good campuses turning out MBAs, ought to pick up pace in 2010. Companies from all sectors (except engineering) are ready to hire as this segment (engineering) has still not revived from the slowdown,” claims Hitesh Oberoi,chief operating officer and co- founder, Naukri.com.
“In sectors like infrastructure, insurance, healthcare and telecom new project hiring is taking place,” says Mr Oberoi. Naukri.com runs Naukri JobSpeak, which gives an index of job listings added to the site every month by recruiters who are clients of Naukri.com. “The job index in July 2008 was 1000 and it went down to as low as 640. But now the job index has improved and it is 700 and should go higher in September, " says Mr Oberoi, on the sidelines of HR Summit organised by Confedaration of Indian Industry.
But companies are not interested in increasing headcount in a major way—only in replacement for attrition as manpower has reached optimum level, he adds. Also, recruiters have now become very cautious in selecting candidates and are even tightening their control on the fixed salary increases. “They won’t like to give a 20% increase this year as they did in the past and the companies will like to restrict hikes to more reasonable levels. Even freshers might not see a hike in their salary packages this year,” says Mr Oberoi.
New hires might not get good packages but there is scope for better incentive plans, compensations and bonuses if the companies perform well in this fiscal year, says an industry expert. “We will be recruiting at least 30-40 freshers in the year 2009 and last year we have recruited a similar number. In the first quarter of this financial year (Q1 FY 10) there were no recruitments but after that we have resumed recruitments,” says Arvind Sharma, chairman India sub-continent, Leo Burnett.
As the fast moving consumer goods sector has reported a robust growth in the past few quarters, it is also reporting good recruitments in this sector. “We have recruited a lot of freshers during campus selection in 2008 as the FMCG segment did not face any slowdown and we looking forward to do the same this year also,” says Leena Nair, Vice President HR, Hindustan Unilever Limited. Mr Oberoi also points out that if the economy revives again, growing at 8%, then there will be the same mad scramble in hiring. - Pallabika Ganguly
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