Hiring yet to pick up in Chennai

Chennai: Corporate employers in Chennai still seem to be wary of getting back on hiring mode while the rest of the country seem to have turned active on this front.

While hiring trends across the country have shown tre­mendous improvement, Ch­e­nnai’s index continues to be in the negative zone in line with the downtrend in automobile sector.

The Detroit of India is fe­e­ling the pinch on hiring front with most auto and auto ancillary units going slow on recruitment. While hiring across Delhi and Hyderabad turned robust recording a 25 per cent and 20 per cent increase in De­cember 2013, Chennai was the only city to have witne­ssed a 4 per cent decline during the same period, said Naukri Job Speak In­dex for the month of Dec­ember 2013

“Job market in Chennai did experience rough headwinds in the year 2013 fu­elled by the lack of demand in the auto and auto ancillary sector,” said V. Su­resh, executive vice-president and sales head at Na­u­kri.com.

“However we witnessed a slow recovery in the second half of 2013 thanks to the revival of the IT and IT-enabled services sector backed up by busin­ess confidence in the US ma­­rkets and rupee depreciation,” he added.

Though the professionals working in the IT and BPO sector saw maximum gro­wth in the index at 33 per cent year-on-year, sectors su­ch as automobile and ba­nking registered a 17 per cent and 4 per cent negative growth respectively.

In ter­ms of decline, professionals working in banking and insurance and supply chain witnessed a dip with the index moving down by 17 per cent and 15 per cent ye­ar-on-year respectively. En­­gineering design and R&D also saw a decline by 14 per cent.

However, HR experts are hopeful of improvement in the hiring landscape as bellwether sectors as IT and ITeS have shown signs of growth.

“Since 2014 is an election year, we expect the firms to go into an expansion mode either ahead of results or post elections and concomitantly we will see an uptick in hiring activities of companies here,” said Ambarish Ragh­uv­anshi, group president (Fin­ance) and CFO of Info Edge (India) Ltd.