Entry and junior level hiring to drop in second half: study

Entry and junior level hiring is expected to drop in the second half of this fiscal as employers look to hire a "productive workforce", a report by TeamLease Services said.

Employers were hiring reactively (just-in-time) when there were projects as employment outlook lagged business sentiment, leaving little scope for training and orientation, according to the report.

Tier-2 and -3 cities also expected to see a slow down in hiring in the coming half year across sectors and cities, TeamLease Services' Employment and Business Outlook Report for the half year period (October 2013 to March 2014) said.

According to TeamLease Services senior vice president and co-founder, Sangeeta Lala, the next few quarters would be interesting to watch due to the mixed signals emanating from various sources.

She added that while businesses seemed positive hiring was not keeping pace, though the requirement for good talent was always there. Various industries too were bearing the brunt of the slowdown, and how well they realigned themselves to the ground realities would determine the future.

The report added, that businesses that were sensitive to the political-economic fallout, due to upcoming elections had slowed down more on hiring.

These businesses had sensed an opportunity to hire genuine talent interested in securing better workplace environs to hone their capabilities.

The inclination for hiring authentic skills was evident in select geographies with aggressive political regimes – such as Karnataka and Gujarat. Business sentiment in these places was also found to be upbeat.

Engineers continued to the most in demand and were the only professionals being hired- albeit, in small numbers - from a few locations, it said.

A sectoral perspective showed infrastructure (+8 points), retail (+6 points) and healthcare/pharma (+4 points) drove the business outlook, significantly, this coming half-year.

However, manufacturing/engineering had seen a substantial drop of four and five points in the employment and business sentiments. Meanwhile, IT was down by a substantial six points in employment outlook coupled with a two-point marginal reduction in the business outlook.

The city-sector trend showed that healthcare/pharma, infrastructure and retail/FMCG – in that order were driving the sentiment for Bangalore. IT was slightly positive in Bangalore while it tanked in most other cities.

Growth was driven in Ahmedabad by healthcare / pharma and infrastructure while for Mumbai it was retail/FMCG and telecom to some extent.