Comments
Hiring by the IT industry in 2016-17 will be slightly lower than last year due to increased automation and pressure on margins, said Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar.
“Last year, the IT industry hired nearly two lakh employees. This year, we expect it to be lower. With first-quarter results just over, I cannot reliably predict what’s going to happen. However, this trend of non-linearity between revenue growth and hiring is a fact of life and it will continue,” he said.
“We should not be under any illusion and don’t want to set a wrong expectation among people or students that this is going to change,” Chandrashekhar said on the sidelines of a two-day Nasscom HR Summit here. It is not that total hiring is going down, but the pace is slowing because of automation and pressure on margins. Companies’ growth has been disproportionately higher when compared with profitability.
This means companies need to boost productivity. They are reducing bench strength by automating mundane jobs, he said.
Demand for niche skills But there is a demand for specialised skill sets such as Cloud, robotics, artificial intelligence, social media and domain knowledge.
“If you have additional skills, the chance of getting hired is far better,” he said.
There is no reduction in demand as businesses globally are still investing in IT. The BFSI sector is under pressure, but its investment in IT is strong. India’s own market share in global sourcing is increasing. The value proposition of the Indian IT industry is still the best and it is improving vis-à-vis other countries, he said.
The Indian IT-BPM industry currently employs 3.7 million people and maintains its leadership globally with over 2 lakh net additions and 3.5 lakh digitally skilled employees.
A Nasscom report entitled ‘Human Capital Trends Study – Application of technology in Talent Acquisition – Key Learnings & Challenges in Adoption’ released at the event said that to continue the current momentum of growth, the industry will require 1.2-2 million employees to add $100 billion in revenue by 2025.
Five forces that are changing the world at an unprecedented pace and scale are the rise of emerging markets, ageing of the global population, disruptive technologies, an integrating world and the return of (geo)-politics, it said.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.