This week marked a lot of activity in Government jobs, some of the news positive, some not quite. Haryana Government and the Railways announced massive recruitment drives with plans of filing positions for thousands of jobs in the coming months. In a landmark directive, the government has announced a reservation of 3% jobs in public sector organizations for the disabled. In the corporate sector, reports state that job creation was healthy with a 9% overall increase in new job creation in the second quarter ending September 30. The top five metros accounted for 61% of the new job creation, with the Delhi/NCR region leading the pack. Bangalore also contributed around 12.3% growth in jobs.

A talent acquisition battle between two reputed global consulting companies operating in India, KPMG and PWC is showing signs of intensifying with both companies hiring at a rapid pace from each other. Many are referring to this as a full-blown talent war. It is for time to tell the final outcome of this talent war and its impact on the overall consulting landscape in India. The war for talent is showing signs even in the Silicon Valley, with companies spending unprecedented sums of money on engineering talent. Recently Silicon Valley hired a software engineer who was getting marginally less as remuneration compared to the C-level executives at the company. Globally, companies are looking to hire skilled engineering talent.

If you are a stunner, it may work to your advantage at the workplace. While this is no secret that good looks can potentially add that extra push that we sometimes need for making things happen, a recent poll conducted by TimesJobs states that 37% of the respondents taking the poll believe that good looks aid promotions. While it is for employers to maintain fairness and objectivity in the promotion process, it is a thought to ponder over nevertheless!

Appointments: This week marked many senior appointments across the spectrum of Indian industry. The biggest among them is the appointment of Rajeev Chopra as the Global Head of a business group at Philips. Chopra joins the league of some recent honchos who were selected to head global businesses in some of the major global companies, such as Coca-Cola’s Atul Singh and Pepsico’s Sanjeev Chadha. Arunendu Kumar was appointed as the Railway Board Chairman after months of lobbying and speculation.

Layoffs: Heavy layoffs in some of the most reputed names in the global industry are indicating that the US and Europe economies are still far from recovery. This week, Lockheed Martin and Wells Fargo both announced that it had served notices of laying off employees numbering in thousands. The retail arm of the London-based banking company, HSBC decided to shut shop in India stating low income and no profitability. This will lead to the company cutting 300 jobs in India.

Mass hiring in the IT sector: Both TCS and Infosys, two of the biggest names in the IT service sector in India announced aggressive hiring plans. Both companies announced hiring plans of thousands of employees as part of their growth strategy.