Festive season may drive temporary hiring up to 25%

Job demand is high for e-commerce companies, logistics, FMCG, hospitality, retail, supply chain, and transport

Good days are here again for job seekers as temporary hiring may see a jump of 20-25% this festive season compared to last year, say experts.

The festive season that lasts nearly five months starting from Ganesh puja till New Year requires additional staff to handle spike in orders and deliveries. The demand is especially high for e-commerce companies, logistics, FMCG, hospitality, retail, supply chain, and transport.

Companies in these industries report almost 40-50% of their total business during the festive period such as Diwali and Christmas and hire a lot of temp resources, including interns and youngsters from colleges and academic institutions.

"This temporary hiring not only avoids the long-term cost for start-ups, but helps them in experimenting fresh resources in different functional areas. And they observes resources for permanent and long term roles," said Sunil Goel, MD, executive search firm GlobalHunt, adding that temp hiring will go up by a minimum 20-25% as against last year.

According to Sudeep Sen, Assistant Vice-President, TeamLease Services, there is likely to be an increase of 20% in temp staffing during festive season this year compared to last year.

Citing an example, Sen said the Future group is looking to hire nearly 1,000 additional workers for the festive rush, that is an increase of 20% year-on-year.

"They hire from staffing firms like TeamLease Services, students from tier 2 and 3 cities who are later trained on specific roles like customer-facing, back-end and store management. Wages range from Rs 12,000-15,000 per month and they would also get performance-based variable pay," he added.

According to the experts, the retail sector sees 15% additional staff coming on board as Indians are known to buy new phones and electronic gadgets during this time.

"In preparation of the festive spike, we had created nearly 10,000 temporary jobs. The temporary positions are mostly in logistics and delivery and some positions are also in the seller support function," said Tony Navin, SVP, Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives, Snapdeal.

Navin noted that hiring has been strongest in cities like Lucknow, Kolkata, and Bengaluru with bigger fulfilment centres and those with the highest demand.

"We offered a two-week internship opportunity to college students - a unique opportunity to participate behind the scenes in a fast-paced environment. The interns have also been working with the Snapdeal team in various offices as part of various support teams. These temporary jobs/positions have been running from September 15 and will continue till November 15, 2016," Navin added.