Wait gets longer for mid-level job aspirants

The more the work experience, the longer is the time to find alternate employment

Source: Moneycontrol.com | Aug 09, 2019 04:00 PM IST

Varun Agarwal, a 37-year-old telecom sector employee from Delhi has been on a job hunt for almost nine months. He has changed four jobs earlier but this time, he says, the wait is the longest.

“I was open to shifting to another industry but that required me to move to Mumbai and also take a 30 percent pay cut. That is not feasible,” says Agarwal who has about seven years of work experience.

There are several others like Agarwal with work experience of 5-8 years who have been caught in the midst of the slowdown. Companies are making do with whatever personnel they have at these positions, without hiring additional people due to a fear of the economy worsening and having to let go of staff.

At a time when fears of a slowdown loom large over the country, candidates above a certain level of work experience are finding it challenging to find relevant job positions. On average, in industries like automobile, engineering, manufacturing, telecom and financial services, the period of wait has become as long as 10 months.

The more the experience level, the tougher it is to find a job, said Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-Founder & Executive Vice President, TeamLease Services.

Sectoral trends are also prominent, she said, pointing out it will be difficult for a candidate, for instance, to find a job in the telecom sector. Other considerations like pay cuts or relocations come in if the candidate is ready to move to other sectors.

This is due to a mix of both macroeconomic factors as well as lack of niche skills. Growth has slowed down and this has impacted India Inc’s hiring intentions.

Human resource sources said there is a widespread hiring freeze across companies. At the fresher level, people are being hired for basic roles. Or the hiring is happening at the C-suite level. Mid-level executives are the ones who find it tough as they may not be qualified enough for the CXO roles and unwilling to take up entry-level jobs.

Sunil Goel, Managing Director, GlobalHunt said there is a lot of policy optimisation by the government leading to a realignment of human resources.

“Earlier there was a lot of hype in the market in terms of hiring. Now sectors like engineering and automobiles are facing the heat. Hence, for mid-level executives who have basic skills, finding a job is no longer easy,” he added.

Individuals with niche skills like coding, social media marketing, data analytics, crisis management or SEO optimisation have been among the most in-demand.

However, this may not be a permanent phenomenon and experts said India may stand to benefit from the ongoing US-China trade war.

“Companies may find India as an attractive market to set up production facilities. This will help candidates find jobs quicker,” said Goel.