It’s yesterday once more at business school campuses: summer job placements this year seemed like final placements four or five years ago. At the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, for example, as many as 75 firms out of a total 230 didn’t get the chance to make offers as the process ended ahead of schedule. The summer placement report card suggests 2013 may be a much better year than 2012 for jobs — IIM Lucknow placed 453 students in a record five days and IIM Calcutta’s 449 students secured job offers in four days. Even the newbie, IIM Rohtak, saw 53 companies participating with the highest stipend crossing Rs 1 lakh. Beyond IIM, the 240 students of XLRI Jamshedpur got over 280 offers in four days, while at Mumbai-based Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, many companies returned to the campus after a year’s gap.
These campuses are a microcosm of the job market, reflecting early signs of economic revival and an improvement in sentiment. Recruitment consultants have, thus, turned optimistic. According to the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, in the first quarter of 2013, 4,496 Indian employers report strong hiring prospects, with almost a quarter of India’s employers expecting to increase staffing levels. Employers in all four regions of the country expect to grow payrolls during the first quarter of 2013. And worldwide, hiring expectations are strongest in Taiwan, India, Brazil and Mexico. Much hope is being pinned on the new banking licences. New private banks may poach from public sector banks; but the latter – already short-staffed – might hire 50,000 to 70,000 people. State Bank of India, the country’s largest bank, for example, recruited 20,000 for its clerical cadre; 8,000 left within a year, prompting it to not only fill up the vacant positions, but also plan to hire additional numbers. Overall, ever higher labour and power supply costs in China may well turn out to be a good opportunity for Indian manufacturers to expand. Estimates already show that the country may see more than a million jobs being created over the course of the next 12 months.
So the job scene looks promising. Yet a huge challenge remains: the shortage of skills. The overall “employability” of India’s graduates remains weak because the skills they acquire aren’t aligned with what the marketplace requires. Surveys have shown that as many as 80 per cent of top Indian executives feel that availability of talent will be a significant constraint on business over the next five years, and just about half of over two million graduates who pass out every year are considered employable. This needs to be addressed if any turnaround in the job market is to be maintained.
