Hiring through social channels: A growing trend in IT sector

BANGAORE, INDIA: The year 2014 has recorded an upscale hiring across several key industries in India. This momentum is going to continue in the coming year as well and Software, Hardware, and IT sector will not be left untouched with this upsurge in demand of talent. There will be an increase of 18% in the hiring numbers  in 2015 compared to this year, predicts India’s job prediction presented in India Skills Report 2015.

The employers from Software and IT sector when asked on the sources that they will use for hiring, chose internal referrals (24% employers choosing it as the most preferred channel) over all others like job portals that was chosen by 21% employers. Social media channels like Linkedin and Facebook have seen increasingly being used in recent times and is expected to register a significant choice of employers at 15%. Campus hires, consultants, and company websites were preferred by 14%, 11%, and 10% employers, respectively. The sheen of job fairs seems to have decreased for IT recruiters with only 3% employers willing to make use of this channel for hiring.

The sector continues to go for permanent employees in its workforce, with more than 75% employers sharing that their contractual workforce composition lies between 0-10%. Only 12% employers shared that about 40-60% of their workforce comprises of contractual workforce.

In terms of what kind of candidates would be hired (as per the academic qualifications) by the Software &  IT sector -  engineers would top the chart with 57% share in the total hiring mix, followed by general graduates(degree) at 24%, candidates from management background at 14%. The preference for hiring candidates with diploma is steadily decreasing (compared to last year or 2013) with approximately 4% expected in 2015. There would be an increase in interest to hire candidates with vocational training, with such candidates finding 1.46 % share in the hiring pie.

When questioned on which experience range would be most preferred for hiring, employers said fresher would be most in demand in the IT sector at 45%. Hiring numbers for candidates with 1-5 years of domain work experience would rest at 30%, followed by 10-15 years at 12.5.

Younger candidates with less than 24 years are expected to be most preferred, with almost 50% of employers that were surveyed across the country and scale of business. The next major age group from 25-30 would make for choice of approximately 30% employers followed by 31-35 getting consent of only 15% employers. The senior level age group of 35-55 would account for the preference of only 8% employers, whereas the candidates in 56-65 age group is expected to have little preference with .02% only.

While the software and IT sector features amongst the sectors which show gender diversity; the sector is still dominated by male candidates who still form around 68% of the existing workforce, with female employees expected to form 32% of the workforce.

Integrity, values, and result orientation, followed by cultural fitment, communication skills, domain expertise, numerical and logical abilities and adaptive capabilities rank the order in most important “skill/requirement” that employers would look out for when they would take hiring decisions. Interestingly, communication skills rank higher than the domain expertise (which the employers are ready to provide training for).

The Top 3 states that will see major hiring activity from the Software and IT sector are Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra.

(India Skills Report is a joint initiative of Wheebox, PeopleStrong HR services and Linkedin in association with industry body, CII)