Jobs: Up the ladder

Arundhati Bakshi-Dighe

Mumbai, December

Here's some good news for 2005: the job market will only get bigger and better. In fact, it is expected to bring in more diverse career options than ever before.

Even on a conservative note, the job market will see close to 40 per cent growth in the coming year. And this boom will not be restricted to just the ITeS and IT sectors. Opportunities are likely to be thrown up by sectors like biotechnology, retailing, textiles, garments, automobiles and auto ancillaries, chemical, infrastructure, oil and petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Thanks to sound corporate results, huge FDI inflows and dark clouds off disappearing off the outsourcing market, Indian job-seekers had never had it better.

While the sectors leading the growth curve will continue to be IT and ITeS — estimated to create more than 2 lakh jobs — other sectors like outsourcing (both IT and non-IT related), financial services, and telecom, are expected to grow at a scorching pace. Even within the IT sector, some special skill-sets will be in great demand. ‘‘Skill-sets in niche areas like tech architecture, process migration, analytics will be in great demand,’’ says E. Balajie, ED (staffing solutions) MaFoi Consultants.

In salary-terms too, boosted by the US election results and client acquisitions, software personnel will continue to get the fattest pay cheques. ‘‘I forsee close to 18 per cent hike in salaries in the BPO sector, more so because of the huge expansion in the ITeS market and more demand for special skill-sets,’’ says Balajie.

But who will be the biggest job creator? ‘‘The BPO industry is definitely creating the highest number of new jobs,’’ says Alok Mittal, CEO, Jobsahead.com. ‘‘Given the challenges the BPO companies face while hiring in metros, they will widen their search to recruit people from smaller cities, which is a boon for those living there,’’ he adds. The ITeS sector is expected to create close to 1.5 lakh jobs in 2005.

Similarly, a direct impact of the booming retail culture has been the spawning of jobs in the hundreds of malls and life-style stores. ‘‘Retailing and lifestyle offer careers to college-goers in what in the West is known as $10-dollar-a-day jobs. These include counter sales, retail outfits, food delivery, stylists and interior decorators, merchandising wedding planners,’’ says Tarun Bali, CEO, ABC Consultants.

The textile industry promises just as much after the quota regime ends in 2005. ‘‘The textile industry is already positively affected by the quotas going off. A number of companies have expanded their capacity to tap the new opportunity,’’ says Mittal of Jobsahead.com. ‘‘This sector could create more than 50,000 new jobs,’’ he adds. But the end of quotas is not going to impact the textile industry, at lease pay-wise. Consultants do not expect the textile industry to see any sharp salary hikes.

Another sector picking up seems to be the temporary staffing segment. ‘‘Retail, FMCG, consumer durables, insurance and BPO clients rely heavily on this segment to tap talent in Class C towns and also as a new product test cases,’’ says Bali.

But just as these sectors will see a surging recruitment drive, they will also be plagued by increasing attrition. Sectors like software services would face a little over 15 per cent attrition, say analysts. Retail too will face the same problem. However, according to market watchers, ‘skill-set-corridors’ are being created to tackle the lack of trained manpower. Just like geographic corridors, skill-set-corridors are made leveraging the transferable skills from one sector to another. A whole lot of cross-sector hiring too is in the offing.

The key recruiter — IT/ITeS segment — has been luring people from BFSI, hotels, education, training and consulting, manufacturing and healthcare. Similarly, telecom and retail sectors are proving to be more lucrative than FMCG but losing out to IT/ITeS.

The attrition pressure notwithstanding, a robust and diverse market would just suit the job-seekers fine. So it’s time to ready your resumes!