Time To Upskill: Covid-19 Slows Down Hiring At India Inc

The Covid-19 pandemic has not only slowed down global markets and economy, it has started to hit jobs directly as highlighted in the recently released Naukri JobSpeak Index. According to the online job listing platform, hiring activities have registered a year-on-year decline of 18% in March 2020.

The Naukri JobSpeak Index also noted that the hiring activities have been halted across all the cities in the country. For instance, the job market in Delhi declined by 26% followed by Chennai and Hyderabad at 24% and 18% respectively.

Chief business officer of Naukri Pawan Goyal said that negative sentiment on hiring was visible in the JobSpeak index starting January, due to the economic slowdown. However, due to the nationwide lockdown to curb coronavirus, there was a substantial drop in recruitment activity in March.

Travel, Hospitality Crippled By Covid-19

Some of the sectors that have been affected the most because of the coronavirus outbreak include travel, aviation, and retail. These industries are facing huge losses right now as people are not travelling amid lockdown.

With fewer revenues, hirings in the hospitality, aviation, and tourism sector have gone down by 56% while retail has slowed down the hiring of new employees by 50%. These sectors are followed by the automobile and its ancillary industries which have slowed down hirings by 38%, according to Naukri JobSpeak.

Besides hiring fewer employees, many of the startups in this segment are also resorting to salary cuts and layoffs to maintain their longevity. For instance, the founders of online travel platforms (OTAs) such as Yatra and ixigo have foregone their salary while employees have taken salary cuts to help the company manage runway till conditions improve in the travel industry.

Bengaluru-based budget hotel chain Treebo has asked its employees to take voluntary resignations as it fights pandemic and tries to cut down its costs. Moreover, the decline in hiring activities has impacted separate experience bands differently. Senior experience bands ( over 13 years experience) witnessed the sharpest decline of 29% while entry-level experience band (0 to 7 years) saw a decline of 16%.

Pharmaceutical, BFSI Take Slow Steps

In these times, the medical and pharmaceutical sectors are in great demand. However, companies in the industry have also slowed down their hiring process. The index notes that new hirings in pharmaceutical companies have slowed down by 26% as compared to March last year.

Pharmaceutical companies are followed by insurance (11%), accounting or finance firms (10%), IT corporations (9%) and banking finance securities and insurance companies (9%), according to Naukri JobSpeak.

Time To Upskill

While there are lesser opportunities to switch right now, Naukri said it is the right time for jobseekers to upskill themselves through edtech platforms. Some of the notable skill development platforms in India include upGrad, Udacity, Shine Learning, Coursera, among others. Some of these edtech startups are also offering their courses for free amid the lockdown period.

For this index, Naukri records hiring activity based on the job listings on the website. With this index, Naukri aims to measure the hiring activities in various industries, cities, functional areas and experience levels.