Quess Corp CEO Guruprasad Srinivasan on new hiring trends in India

“BPO/ITES is number one in terms of hiring, followed by manufacturing industries, banking and financials with a lot of digital intensification that is happening in terms of merchant pay and digital transaction on the payment side. A lot of rollout is happening in that space,” says Guruprasad Srinivasan, ED & CEO, Quess Corp

What are some of the new hiring trends that you are seeing as the economy has decisively opened up?
For India, certain key things are happening. First and foremost, we are coming out of Covid 3.0. Second, there are lots of intensification of digital backbone and that is getting intensified across commercial establishments and businesses. Infrastructure development is a third reinforcement which is also part of the Budget. We heard a lot of areas are being focussed around infrastructure. The fourth area is life beyond key metros. A lot of developments are happening in tier II, tier III segments. Finally, the new labour court and informal parts of the economy are moving into formal.

These are the four key incidents that are going to take place in the next three years from now on. Overriding all of this is going to be talent and accessibility to the right talent. That is the business that we are into. We are into human capital space and we are quite bullish about the kind of development that is happening across. I would like to give you some numbers.

If I were to look at the Monster index, we see almost 7% upsurge in terms of hiring year on year, based on our database. There is a positive impact post Union Budget. A few specific sectors – BPO, IT, ITES – are almost 11% up. We get more escalations on hiring in these segments and Nasscom is also alluding to it. There is a very solid growth trajectory that we are seeing there.

Manufacturing and industries are almost about 9% up in terms of hiring. In banking and financial segment, hiring is up almost 15%. Retail is just coming out of it. So, there are quite a lot of runways to go on as we move forward.

Are there any specialised role-specific industries which are seeing a higher demand now for new talent or for new jobs or is it pretty much across the board as the economy opens?
As I mentioned, BPO/ITES is number one, followed by manufacturing industries, banking and financials with a lot of digital intensification that is happening in terms of the merchant pay and digital transaction on the payment side.A lot of rollout is happening in that space.

Retail is a space where wait-and-watch is best. The multiplexes are opening. The retail outlets are slowly coming up and the footfall are increasing in that space. That is a space which we watch out for but there are a few futuristic spaces that we are eagerly waiting for. Telecom is one. It is a space where we have not been seeing much action in the last three years. 5G is around the corner and that is going to boost a lot because the digital wave rides on rolling out 5G over a period of time – whether it is data, robotics or process automation. Everything is layered on the telecom industry and that is an area to wait and watch for the 5G spectrum auction which is around the corner.

Travel and tourism is slowly opening up. We are coming out of a wave, people have started travelling. The international borders are open and that will lead to the hotel and hospitality industry to boom a lot so that is a segment to watch out of course real estate is another area to watch for.

The headline in the pandemic year was cut jobs, save costs. The headline last year was great resignation wave! Everybody had more jobs and suddenly there was a talent crunch. What will be the headline now? Normalisation? Wage inflation coming down? Something has to change this year, right?
I do not think there is a definition on wage or the discussion around optimisation would revolve anymore. It is largely to do with how fast the talent can be hired. That is where the game is going to change because earlier, in technology, every two years, a new release used to happen. But now it is in eight weeks that a new release happens. One need not wait for any upgrades for so long and when technology changes rampantly, one has to have quick access to talent. If I were to put a tagline, it is going to be availability of resources at a faster timeline.

I looked at the CMI data, it tells me there is a surge in unemployment. I look at the EPFO data, it tells me a very different picture. They both are data points, they both are related to jobs, what is the right way of looking at data?
There are two areas in it; EPFO contributors are a set of formal employment and there is also the other set of economy which is slowly coming in, the gig economy and on-demand economy. We will have to see holistically. In my view, there is a different mix of employment. There are the regular FTs that we correlate to. Then there is a set of fresh entrants who come into entry level jobs, trainees, apprentice trainees and the third level which is into the gig economy. So we will have to see it holistically.

The gig economy seems to be booming and there is competition among start-ups and unicorns. They have been flush with cash. What has that really meant for the gig workers?
So it is a new form of employment and it is all about taskers on one side of the platform and task givers on the other side of the platform. We have an investment in the space. We have invested in a company called Taskmo where they have taskers and on the other side we have task givers.

Typically we match the task to be performed on a specific case to case basis. It is like onboarding a merchant at a specific store. These are non repetitive in nature and it works well for individuals who do not want to stick to a full-time role but will do this for eight to 10 hours during the day and earn more. It works well for the task givers also as they pay per task and not for an FT. So in totality, this is a form of employment but this will not cannibalise or supersede any other format of employment. This will account for may be 10-15% of teh overall employment base.

We are talking at a time when the engineer has been king, at least when it comes to new tech companies. A lot has been said about women entering the workforce as well, salary raises, attrition. Can you put it all in context for us?
Most women are employed in three different segments – IT, ITES and BFSI and specifically from the banking segment. There has been a 30% uptick in IT, ITES segment and about 13% uptick in the BFSI segment from the last year and IT, ITES and BFSI in totality contributes about 70% of women’s employment.