India Inc's Hiring Intent for 2019 Most Positive in Last 4 Years: PeopleStrong Survey

GURGAON, India, November 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Hiring intent in 2019 is expected to be strongest after a gap of four years on the back of bullish employment opportunities in Software & Hardware, Automotive and Travel and Hospitality sectors, according to India Skills Report 2019. The appetite for fresh hiring can be gauged from the fact that the intent for 2019 has more than doubled to 15% from a mere 7% in 2017. India Skills Report 2019 is a joint initiative by PeopleStrong, India's fastest growing HR solutions, and HR Technology Company, and Wheebox, a Global Talent Assessment Company, in collaboration with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) along with partners like UNDP, AICTE, and AIU.

Driving the growth in hiring intent in 2019 is the Software Industry, which is emerging from the shadow of de-growth, turbulence and freeze in hiring after a gap of two years. While design and analytics jobs would be the most sought-after ones in the overall set, the demand would increase for almost all profiles especially specialist technologies in the space of AI/machine learning. The report says even though hiring volumes might not reach the scale of 2010-11, the situation would still be better than what it was in the last 2-3 years.

Apart from software, Engineering, Automotive, Travel, and Hospitality will see a considerable upswing in their hiring numbers next year.

The survey this year revealed that almost 64% of employers have a positive outlook on hiring. While almost 20% of employers said they will hire the same number of people as 2018, only handful have a negative outlook for 2019.

Mr. Pankaj Bansal, Co-founder, and CEO of PeopleStrong said, "It is encouraging to see a positive hiring intent this year and even more to see tech hiring getting back in action. It is also heartening to see that the increase in hiring intent is not limited to organizations of a certain size, but it is spread across companies of different sizes and sectors."

The year 2019 marks the second consecutive year of job market revival. After a high of 23% in 2015, the year on year increase in hiring intent had slipped to 14% in 2016 and further to a low of 7% in 2017. There was, however, a revival in 2018 when the intent had risen to 10%.

On gender diversity, the survey says female employability this year has increased to 46% from 38% last year. Male employability score has grown marginally to 48% from 47% last year. Of all the new hiring in 2019, almost 15-20% would comprise of women, the report further said.

Indian economy can grow at the rate of 9% to 10% if there is gender parity in the country, and the share of women workforce is increased to 48% from the current 24%, it said.

The report also consists of an in-depth study of employability amongst the fresh candidates joining the workforce and shared that of all students passing out this year, more than 48% are employable. According to the nationwide study, the top three states in terms of employability is Andhra Pradesh followed by West Bengal and Delhi. While engineers continue to be most employable, Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) & Information Technology (IT) have the highest employability rate.

The report was launched by Senior Government officials at CII's event in Lucknow today.

The 6th edition of India Skills Report captures insights and trends from the largest employability test that was spread out to 3200 Universities and Professional Institutions in India. The test reached out to more than 3 lakh students across 29 states and 7 Union Territories on the talent supply side, along with India hiring intent - a primary research survey on the talent demand side that reached out to over 1000+ employers across sectors like Manufacturing, Core, ITES, IT, BFSI etc. to get an idea of job demand and potential hiring intent for the coming year.

About PeopleStrong: 

PeopleStrong is a leading human resource (HR) Solutions and Technology company from India, that is enriching experience at work for over 200+ customers and over 600,000 users. With the vision to simplify work life, PeopleStrong delivers its technology and services in one offering, using its on-demand technology product PeopleStrong Alt, which has distilled tens of thousands of hours of 'natural research and development (R&D) - a decade long experience of servicing the HR functions of top Indian companies. Known for its penchant to innovate, PeopleStrong has many firsts to its name, the recent one being the application of Machine Learning in Recruitment (through Match Making) and Employee Experience (through India's first HR Chatbot Jinie). PeopleStrong is the first company in the space to be successfully assessed on SSAE18. For more information, visit https://www.peoplestrong.com/ .

About Wheebox: 

Wheebox is India's leading online talent assessment company headquartered in India and spread across 5 countries globally. Wheebox partners' corporations for finding and retaining best talent using validated, reliable and standardized test for pre-hiring and measuring learning initiatives using robust assessment tools and online video proctored secured solutions. Wheebox benchmarks over 3 million users annually across globally. Staying aligned to the vision of Wheebox to "Measure World's Talent", it partners over 5000 higher and vocational education campuses for conducting its proprietary "Wheebox Employability Skill Test" for final year graduates to benchmark competencies that matter the most for being employable in corporations. Wheebox partners many fortune 180 large corporations and hundreds of small and medium enterprises to power their hiring and competency development assessment needs globally. Wheebox also powers "India Skills Report" skill supply side study and complements thousands of colleges to identify, benchmark and spot areas of competencies and supplementing with Institution wide and candidate report for developing competencies for employment. Wheebox partners many Indian states to design and deploy State Skills Report and Ministry of Labor and Employment with its proprietary BARO Career Interest Report for suggesting careers to candidates across Model Career Centers in India. 

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