IT Firms Focusing More On Lateral Hiring Over Freshers: Indeed India's Sashi Kumar
The latest Indeed Hiring Tracker indicates that 73% employers hired actively in the April–June quarter in 2024, a 7% rise from the January-March period.
India’s white-collar job market is seeing more hiring at the lateral levels than of the freshers, especially in the IT sector, according to Sashi Kumar, head of sales at the online job portal Indeed India.
“We are seeing improvement in freshers' hiring but not to the extent that we have seen it in the lateral levels,” Kumar told NDTV Profit.
He added that India’s IT sector has seen an 8–10% increase in hiring as a result of increased demand for generative AI, cybersecurity, and cloud computing.
The latest Indeed Hiring Tracker indicated that 73% employers hired actively in the April–June quarter in 2024, a 7% increase from the January-March period. Demand for roles including data analysts, data engineers, and data scientists are leading the IT hiring, while sales and marketing jobs have been the focus during this period.
Not just white-collar jobs, the gig economy in the country also looks positive ahead of the festive season. Kumar said there was a 20% increase in hiring around festive roles as compared to last year, adding that for the first time, tier 1 and tier 2 cities are contributing more towards gig hiring than metro cities.
“If we were to look at growth in festive season hiring, cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Delhi, and Kolkata have seen an 18% hiring increase. For the first time, we are in tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Nagpur, Jaipur, Vadodara, etc, where we are seeing a 22–25% increase in hiring,” he said.
This increased demand in the gig space will also have a trickle-down effect on white-collar jobs, according to the senior executive.
“Increase in hiring before the festive season is a sign that most companies expect to have a bump in festive season sales. So, obviously, there will be downstream effects on white-collar roles as well,” he noted.
