CHENNAI: The IT industry in India is expected to add more than 200,000 workers to its workforce this year, about the same as last year, with apex body NASSCOM saying that it expects its 3.5 million workforce to grow by 6% this year. Last year, the industry’s employee headcount growth was around 7-8%.
Speaking to reporters at the HR summit here on Thursday, NASSCOM president R Chandrasekhar said that while the HR industry for IT is itself going through an evolution, with digital influences redefining the way HR worked, the industry is expected to add 6% to its workforce, less than the 7-8% it clocked last year. The industry’s constant currency growth however is expected to stay steady, from 13% it clocked last year to 12-14% this year. “We expect to add around 6% to the workforce this year,” he said.
More important however, was NASSCOM’s reading of the way HR and hiring is changing. One of the most important take-aways from its Annual HR survey for 2015 was that the ‘War for talent’ had shifted from “Quantity to Quality” or from “Scale to Skill.” 58% of the companies in the survey have stated that they would be hiring more laterals this year. “Nearly 58% have said that they will hire more laterally, while only 34% will be focusing on hiring more freshers. This is due to a shift in the way companies are looking for people. It is more about skill now than quantity,” said Chandrasekhar.
The skew of recruiters towards experienced and skilled people is directly linked to the kind of skills IT companies have started to prefer. Among the top skills that IT companies said they would be looking for include entrepreneurial ability and highly technical skills like those in mobile applications, data analytics and cloud.