Recruitment activity logs 2% drop in March over previous month: Report

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Mumbai: The recruitment activity saw a drop of 2% in March 2021 over the previous month, mainly dragged by a decline in job postings in sectors including banking/financial services, insurance, production and manufacturing, according to a report.

The overall data indicate that there was a slight decline in job posting activity in March, according to Monster Employment Index, a job analysis report by Monster.com, a Quess Company.

Industries such as banking/financial services, insurance (6%), production and manufacturing (6%), telecom/ISP (4%), and media and entertainment (4%), which previously showed a positive outlook, have witnessed a month-on-month decline in March 2021, owing to the pandemic, the report noted.

“While the overall index witnessed a slight drop-in recruitment activity, major cities such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad show a positive outlook in hiring demand compared to last year. With companies re-adapting to the flexible-hybrid work model, and digital hiring on the rise with innovative tech, we anticipate a recovery of the Indian job market in the coming quarters,” Monster.com CEO Sekhar Garisa said.

The Monster Employment Index is a broad and comprehensive analysis of online job posting activity on the Monster platform and real-time review of online career outlets during March 2021.

Further, the report stated that most functions and departments have witnessed a slight decline in March, compared to the previous month.

However, the software, hardware, telecom roles continue to recover with a 2% month-on-month growth as of March 2021 compared to February 2021. Functions such as HR and admin, marketing and communications and finance and accounts witnessed a slight dip of 2%, it added.

Hospitality and travel (12%), which showed moderate growth in the previous month, saw a significant decline in March.

Sales and business development (12%) showed a negative trend in recruitment activity across all markets in March, compared to a positive (5%) in February.

Software, hardware, telecom (12%) and arts/creative (3%) are back to pre-Covid levels as of March, the report indicated.

However, it added that customer service (36%), hospitality and travel (35%) and healthcare (26%) have seen the highest year-on-year decline in March compared to the same month in 2020.

Meanwhile, in terms of month-on-month growth, the report revealed that several industries such as logistics, courier/freight/transportation (19%), printing and packaging (5%) and office equipment/automation (5%) saw a significant increase in job postings in March compared with February.

Industries such as agro-based (12%), logistics/courier (9%), telecom/ISP (8%), and IT-hardware, software (5%) also witnessed an upward trend year-on-year in March compared to the same month of 2020.

Cities such as Bengaluru and Pune have witnessed a positive month-on-month uptrend of 2% and 1%, respectively, in March 2021. The same cities have also observed a yearly uptrend, with recruitment activities in Bengaluru (14%), Hyderabad (6%) and Pune (2%) growing in March, compared to the corresponding month in 2020, the report added.