Hiring Activities In India Continue To Rise
The job market seems to be recovering from recession blues as a survey revealed a rise in hiring activities. According to the survey conducted by naukri.com, hiring increased by 1.3% in July compared to what it was in June. The IT and IteS sectors, retail and real estate displayed a spurt and are leading the pack with other industries such as banking, pharma and biotech picking up pace.
The trend shows an increasing demand for experienced professionals as the industry looks to use their expertise and insight to soar again. Professionals with more than 8 years of experience are highly sought after and recruitment of such professionals are showing maximum growth. Among the Indian cities, Hyderabad, Delhi/NCR and Mumbai saw improvement in hiring whereas Chennai, Bangalore and Pune experienced a slight dip.
This report portrays ongoing progress as recruitment activities had increased by 8.1% in June over its preceding month. To read more about the report and for statistics of individual cities, hit this link.
Be Employable, Be Secure
For those of you who are worried about the future of IT in the wake of the recession, there is nothing to worry as IT is here to stay and is actually still in its initial stages. It has a long way to go and a lot of growth to see. So said Mr. P. Rajendran, Director and Chief Operating Officer of NIIT. From his experience of being associated with NASSCOM, Mr. Rajendran opined that while growth rate has slowed down and is currently going ahead at 16-17% from the erstwhile 27%, it is by no means an alarming situation. He emphasized on the prospect of public-private partnerships which can give rise to exciting possibilities. According to him, and rightly so, enhancing employability will automatically lead to a feeling of enhanced security. If you have trained yourself properly and have made yourself desirable in the job-market, then security is not something you should be terribly worried about.
Read the detailed report in The Hindu here.
Attrition Rates: Nightmares of the Industry.
If we are to talk about some of the problems ailing the industry in India, one of the first things that come to mind is attrition. Though its presence is felt in every area, the BPO industry is seen to be suffering the most. High attrition rates have become common in BPOs and HRs need to come up with effective solutions to tackle this problem.
When freshers join a BPO, the company has to spend a considerable amount of time and money in training the new recruits. To enable the employees to communicate well with foreign customers, they are provided voice training, accent training and other tips and tricks of communicating over phone. The candidates need to know a lot about the company and its products as well. So after all the training, if employees leave for other opportunities, it’s back to square one for the companies with another bunch of new employees. Thus bringing the attrition rate down is a priority for most players in the industry.
Some effective strategies to tackle this could be to give employees a sense of job-security, offer them attractive rewards for good performance and make the environment of the offices fun. Work can get stressful at times and various recreational activities can be arranged so that the employees can look forward to a lot more other than routine work.
The attrition rates have lessened over the last year (25-28% on an average) compared to earlier years (55-60%) but that’s largely due to recession. The sooner the companies take effective remedial measures, the better.
Banks Jobs Calling
For everyone out there who are under the impression that global recession will hamper recruitment in Indian banks, here is a piece of good news. Pushing apprehensions of slowdown aside, banks are on a major recruitment drive these days. Two major reasons behind this overdrive being the retirement of a large number of senior employees and banks looking to provide more and more specialized services such as insurance, net banking, asset management and so on. In order to bring new services to their customers, they need to train people with specific skills who will be entrusted with these services.
It is estimated that about 20% of a strong workforce of 750,000 will retire within the next two years. This opens up a huge gap which needs filling. In addition to all this, banks are also expanding so that they can reach out to more people all over India. State Bank of India opened 2000 new branches in 2008-09 and are expected to open 1000 more this year. Openings exist for clerks, general banking officers and specialist officers. Recruitment is happening by the thousands according to this report in rediff.com and all major names such as Canara Bank, SBI, Bank of India,Union Bank of India are involved. So for all of you who have your sights set on a rewarding career in public sector banking, the requirement presents a golden opportunity.