2010 hiring forecast: An analysis

Hiring freeze and lay offs are the most inevitable outcome of a slowdown. The year 2009-10 saw a hiring freeze across sectors and dealt a terrible blow to students with barely any placements at premier B-Schools and professional courses. CNBC-TV18's Kritika Saxena reports.

Real estate, IT, investment banking, consulting, marketing, insurance, auto, FMCG, name it and almost all sectors had frozen hiring by the time 2009 descended. Telecom, pharma and education, the only three sectors that were managing to survive the slowdown did hire yet in cautious numbers. Till July-August, lay offs in IT, real estate, cement and banking reached a peak of 10,000-20,000. And with excess low performers removed, companies increased working hours and began severe cost cutting

Rajeev Dubey, President of HR and Board Member, M&M , said, "There is a sharp focus on cost, on cash conservation, on keeping the competencies or creating the competencies that are required by our business strategies."

S Ramadorai, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, TCS , said, "In difficult times, you ought to look at performance which is much higher that before, efficiencies, coast optimisation, building teams, coming together."

Judhajit Das, Chief-Human Resources, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, said, "The focus is on growth and efficiency. So given that scenario there will not be huge growth in employee numbers."

But the most helpless victims were the students. Premier B-Schools like the IIMs and ISB saw average salaries drop by 14% to even 30% in some cases and struggled through one to even two months of placements against the regular one-week. ISB saw the worst placement season ever with placements pending even after the batch of 2009-10 passed out. But the biggest hit were engineering and design colleges, who could only manage to place 20-30% of its batch and saw average salaries dropping by 50-60%.

But just as we enter into the next year of placements for the batch 2010-11, companies are back on campuses, yet not in high numbers. Pharma, consulting and even some banks have begun to hire from campuses once again.

Paul Savio, External relations, IIM Kolkata, said, "The companies are increasing the number of offers this time because the markets are looking very good. So basically a company which would have made three to four offers last year are looking at six to seven offers this time."

Ajit Rangnekar, Dean at ISB, said, "In general we are seeing a lot more optimism than we saw in 2009. There is a distinct change in the sentiment. We are beginning to see a lot of interest even in the technology sector in taking more talent "

Pankaj Chandra, Director, IIM Bangalore, said, "Confidence has returned but I would not really over emphasise that because we still need to wait and see how the final placements go."

While the hiring on campuses has started to look better than last year, HR experts who measure hiring numbers on a quarterly basis believe that hiring on more experienced fronts is also picking up.

Cherian Kuruvilla, CEO, Manpower Services, said, "Many services like manufacturing, education, retail and even services sectors like IT/ ITES have started showing better scores than last year. As we finish this year and enter the next, things definitely look better for India."

Real estate, insurance and IT that were the worst hit, have especially began recruitment showing a significant jump for the employment outlook for the coming year.