E-commerce leads hiring bandwagon this year
E-commerce is leading the hiring bandwagon this year. The talent acquisition scene has hottened up considerably since January. The Monster Employment Index registers 18 per cent growth in April 2015. Online recruitment activity exceeded the year-ago level in 14 of the 27 industry sectors monitored by the Index.
“There has been resurgence in the overall hiring activity since January 2015. With the revival of investment activities and renewed optimism in India Inc, the recruitment market has been galvanized and we expect the momentum to continue in the coming quarters. Geographically, Mumbai is leading the tally, registering an annual growth of 18 percent. Our index has captured annual progressive growth in the major employment generating sectors- Logistic, Courier/Freight/Transportation, Banking/ Financial Services, Insurance and Engineering, Cement, Construction, Iron/ Steel. The hiring sentiment is further expected to be bullish in sectors like infrastructure, e-commerce, logistics, FMCG, consumer durables and financial services.” said Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, Monster.com (India/ Middle- East/ South East Asia/ Hong Kong).
Leadership Hiring
Hiring top notch leaders seems to be the mantra this year, at least for the e-commerce companies. Flipkart is doubling its technology team from the current 1,000 over the next 12-18 months. They are attracting executives from the likes of Google, Yahoo and Calvin Klein. The company appointed Peeyush Ranjan, senior director of engineering at Google, as senior vice-president and head of engineering. Earlier, Flipkart had named Punit Soni, also a Google excutive who worked with Motorola Mobility, named as the head of products last month.
On a broader note, Flipkart said it will generate over 20 lakh jobs through its marketplace and ancillary services this year.
Snapdeal, which is on a major acquisition spree, has set up a leadership hiring team of five members who work directly with co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal to recruit top executives from outside the company. They are looking to double its employee base from the current 5,000. Snapdeal appointed Idi Srinivas Murthy, a former Coca Cola India marketing director, as its new marketing head. It is also close to hiring a new engineering head and a senior customer services leader. While online restaurant guide Zomato is hiring about 1,200 people this year, Amazon India is looking to continue its pace of 30-35 per cent expansion in employee base this year as well.
According to NASSCOM, the e-commerce sector has been growing at a compounded annual rate of 25 per cent since 2010 and has a market size of around $14 billion currently.
Fabfurnish will ramp up employee base 3-fold to 4,000, while UrbanLadder is looking to more than double their staff to 1,400 employees this year. PepperFry plans to recruit 500 more.
Acquisitions fuel headcount
Online social networking sites are leading the bandwagon when it comes to hiring. Facebook has increased headcount by 48 per cent to 10,082 at the end of March 2015. The headcount was mostly inorganic due to several large acquisitions like Oculus, LiveRail and Whatsapp. It started with Instagram in 2012. Online social networking service provider Twitter, which acquired Zipdial earlier this year, is planning to ramp up its India operations quite significantly at a time when both Google and Facebook are raking in revenues of over millions of dollars. TaxiForSure, a cab aggregator app, is planning to hire about 150 engineers this quarter.
Increased focus on data analytics
There is increased focus on data analytics and business intelligence. Capgemini India is planning to ramp up on the hiring front majorly, by doubling the 4,000-plus workforce. The company has decided to create separate verticals on Business Intelligence and Data Analytics in order to tap growing business opportunities. Oracle has announced that it would hire 1,000 people in Asia Pacific (APAC) to expand and strengthen its sales force in the region, out of which 300 positions will be hired in India for Cloud.
Others
Auto parts’ maker Bosch will recruit 3,200 engineering graduates next financial year in India. They will be part of the 12,000 trained graduates who will be recruited worldwide. PSUs too are not far behind. The country’s largest lender State Bank of India is planning to hire more than 2,400 probationary officers or entry level executives.