Global survey finds confidence leap in Indian job markets

A quarterly survey of employment trends in over 30 key countries has found the percentage of organizations in India hiring professionals and managers has rebounded to 51% after a dramatic fall to 29% at the beginning of 2009. As a result job prospects for professionals and managers in India are now better than the global average.

The ‘Global Snapshot’ from the international recruitment firm, Antal, asked 7397 companies in major markets such as western and eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the USA whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level. It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months. Current hiring across the globe was up from 46% of respondents in April to 50% now. And the percentage of organizations intending to hire in the coming quarter was up from 44% to 48%. At the same time the percentage of organizations intending to shed staff had fallen from 35% in the spring to 25% now.

In India, where Antal currently has eight offices, 66% of businesses expected to recruit in the coming quarter. Only 22% were in the process of reducing headcount and this was expected to drop to 21% over the next three months.

Elsewhere in Asia the employment situation was a variable one. In China 74% of businesses were currently recruiting, in Singapore 73% and in Pakistan 65%.

“After a substantial dip in hiring levels at the start of 2009, confidence seems to have returned to the Indian job market in a dramatic fashion,” says Joseph Devasia, Managing Partner of Antal International, India. “Two thirds of the businesses we spoke to are already in the process of hiring for the next quarter.”

“We would be very brave, or possibly very foolhardy, to assert that the economic crisis that has assailed the world is over,” says Antal’s international CEO, Tony Goodwin, “but there is little doubt that the results of this edition of Global Snapshot give cause for some optimism. The hiring and firing of staff is one of the most effective measures of business confidence and there is no denying that, with a few exceptions, the jobs market for professionals and managers is improving all around the world.”

“Of course there may still be unforeseen troubles waiting around the corner - the W-shaped recession or the ‘dead cat bounce’, for example, so beloved by the more apocalyptic commentators. But what may save us even if they are lying in ambush is an underlying sense of confidence that appears to be returning for the first time in nearly two long and difficult years.”