Switching jobs gets highly rewarding for employees
Switching jobs just got more rewarding. Recruiters say a middle management-level employee can expect up to 50% jump in pay packet by joining a new company while juniorlevel employees will get 20-35% hikes, as companies across sectors step up hiring.
“The job market is looking good,” said Anandorup Ghose, partner at Aon India Consulting. “Rural growth is happening, monsoon predictions look good and core sectors appear to be doing well,” he said, adding that inflation can be the only dampener.
Several companies in manufacturing, including automobile and auto ancillary, capital goods, e-commerce and startups, consumer durables, retail, pharmaceuticals, and banking and financial services sectors have increased their hiring this fiscal year, recruiters and HR heads said.
The job market is set to witness people movements in high numbers as most companies are done with appraisals and salary corrections for the new fiscal.
According to Ghose, salary increase in job switches at junior levels will be limited to 20-30% because of uniform salary band across companies.
“It is at the mid level that the differentiation starts. Job switch hikes become a function of the job and the person at the mid level, and can go up much higher,” he said.
The Indian job market had taken a pause last year due to issues such as the after-effects of demonetisation, glitches related to goods and services tax (GST) implementation and uncertainties over outsourcing in the US.
Things are looking better now. “Since business is picking up you have to increase the bottom manpower base to leverage that,” said Sudhir Dhar, director-human resources, Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
“There is a huge requirement of manpower at the junior levels, including sales, advisory, etc. In housing finance, there is a big requirement for credit and collection roles,” he said.
Naukri.com’s JobSpeak Index for April 2018 shows a 21% increase in hiring activity over the same month last year. Some of the sectors that witnessed double-digit growth in hiring activity in April were auto (44%), construction and engineering (34%), banking and financial services (29%) and IT (20%).
Startups and ecommerce companies, too, are on a hiring spree after a lull of almost two years with several of them looking to double headcount next year, as ET had reported earlier.
The overall pick-up in the job market and the positive sentiment are also reflected in the increase in hiring at B-schools and engineering colleges this year.
“Sectors such as automobile, capital goods, consumer durables, NBFCs are on a hiring binge on the back of economic growth and positive sentiment,” said Kris Lakshmikanth, managing director, The Head Hunters India. “The automobile industry, which has seen new launches in the last one year, is seeing salary increases of 20-25%,” he said.
He said sectors such as startups and ecommerce are seeing salary increase of 30-35% or even more in some cases amid a fresh round of funding and business growth. Logistics and supply chain are also witnessing salary increase of 30-35%, Lakshmikanth said.
Ratna Gupta, director at ABC Consultants said the job market is doing better than last year. “Niche and super niche skills are in demand,” she said. “Technology solutions have picked up. IT services are back in the game, GICs are coming into India, product startups are picking up momentum. Funding is coming in to boost the startup environment.”
Companies may expect higher attrition with more opportunities and high-end skill in demand, Gupta said. However, retention strategies are being focused on to counter this, she added.
Mayank Chandra, managing partner at Antal International, said there are many openings in the pharmaceutical sector across manufacturing, quality and regulatory roles. “Pharma companies are giving us requirements like medico marketing, quality (training, internal audit, data integrity, etc.), engineering, business technology, manufacturing (production, operations and tech services and project) in the last one year,” he said.
In the months to come companies will thrive on therapy areas like cardio-diabetic and oncology, Chandra said. “Renewable energy including solar are doing well at the mid to senior level. In solar energy, electricals and automation, there are multiple vacancies,” he said.