Frontline essential sectors offer a ray of hope for all
Business Line, April 26, 2020
IT, health, ed-tech, logistics and e-com, among others, buck the hiring trend
Are you looking for a job in the midst of the havoc wreaked by the coronavirus pandemic?
Well, you could keep your hopes up if you are looking to be hired by sectors such as IT, health, ed-tech, logistics and e-commerce industries.
Even though the number of job offers posted on sites has gone down compared to the pre Covid-19 time, data shared by Naukri.com shows new job offers across key industries, including IT, BPO, BFSI, education/teaching, medical/healthcare, FMCG, pharma, insurance, accounting/finance, and internet/e-commerce.
Subramanyam S, CEO of AscentHR, said that with the Indian economy grinding to a halt due to enforced lockdown, the demand for the workforce has shifted to frontline essential sectors, “which are bucking the trend and hiring to keep up with the demand to provide essential services to a country under lockdown.”
Job portal Indeed India, stated that overall, job searches have increased by 278 per cent as a share of all searches on its portal since September 2019. The searches mainly were in the healthcare, ed-tech, and remote working sectors. A survey conducted by the portal, in February, revealed that people have shown greater interest about working in healthcare. “The number of job searches for this sector has seen an increase of 5 per cent on a year-on-year basis,” said Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed India.
Analysis by AscentHR and Genius Consultants Ltd showed that e-commerce is another area where jobs are available. Amazon, Grofers and BigBasket recently made announcements to ramp up hiring.
Lohit Bhatia, President of Workforce Management, Quess Corp Limited, said, “Remote interviews are happening for key skills personnel in e-commerce, IT services, and captive IT organisations.”
Pallavi Tyagi, CHRO, at Capgemini India, said the IT major has already hired 6,000 employees for this quarter. For Q2, offers have been rolled out for more than 4,000 lateral hires.
“Manufacturing is also likely to show demand as factories re-open gradually, though a bit of support from the Government can go a long way to assist the same quickly,” said Bhatia.
Rahul Sinha, President-HR, Pidilite Industries Ltd, said that while the company will “have to be nimble-footed and adapt as the situation evolves,” its hiring is “largely in frontline employees.”
With most companies across the world mandating work from home (WFH), AscentHR and Genius Consultants have seen high demand from cloud and PaaS (platform as a service) companies.
According to Manpower Group, many companies are offering employees an opportunity to upskill themselves by taking up online courses along with organising seminars and workshops to ensure employees feel valued.
Indeed India’s analysis shows that job postings for online tutoring and e-learning have seen an increase of 3 per cent between January and March 2020. “This could be a consequence of the shift to online classes, expedited by the current Covid-19 lockdown,” said Kumar.
He explained that a surge of 71 per cent between 2017 and 2020 has been recorded in job postings for online tutoring and e-learning. This, according to him, could be attributed to the advancement of digital media, which has opened newer avenues to roles such as online tutors and e-educators. “The number of job postings for these roles has seen an increase of 8 per cent in the last one year (2019-20)” he said.
“Job seekers are increasingly searching for terms like ‘remote’, ‘work from home’ and related phrases,” said Kumar. Indeed India’s data shows that searches for remote work have increased by over 261 per cent as a share of all searches on its since February 2020, “indicating job seeker expectation is in line with organisational measures to promote flexibility,” he explained.
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