Hiring intent of firms sobering

NEW DELHI - Indian companies are going slow on hiring for the October-December quarter, even as the business outlook is improving, a leading staffing firm said Monday.

With business sentiments improving consistently over the last six quarters, the employment market seems to be gradually sobering down in terms of hiring sentiment, TeamLease Services said in its employment outlook report.

The report said this shift in hiring intent vis-a-vis business sentiment implied that companies were now focusing more on efficiency and productivity.

Retail and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) was the only sector that showed significant improvement of eight percentage points on the net employment outlook index, while information technology enabled services (ITES) witnessed a significant drop of six percentage points in the index.

Sobering of hiring sentiment and deceleration of the net employment outlook index has clear patterns across sectors, the report said.

The report also pointed that even though metro cities continued their dominance, smaller towns had moved up a notch in the hiring intent.

It indicated that entry level hiring continued to grow in comparison to mid-level positions which seemed to be lagging behind.

The report was prepared by covering 624 companies.