IT hiring to grow 10-12% in 2021 as global purse strings loosen: TeamLease

Growth to be led by demand for contractual staff, advanced technology skills

After hitting the slower lane, IT hiring is expected to pick up in 2021 showing double-digit growth as global clients open up their purse strings to digitise their operations using new age technologies. According to staffing solutions provider TeamLease the demand for IT talents is expected to gain momentum in 2021 and see a growth of 10-12 per cent backed by positive demand environment.

The uptick is expected to be led by recovery in demand for contractual staff which had taken a massive hit apart from advanced technical skillsets such as data sciences and data analytics the demand for which is expected to see an increase of 45 per cent.

“With 95 per cent of organisations planning to increase their cloud spends in the coming 12 months, talent skilled in Cloud Computing/Devops also will be in demand,” said Siva Prasad Nanduri - VP and Business Head - IT Staffing at TeamLease Digital. The demand will also be driven by cybersecurity professionals while the demand for Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning as well as product owners/ Certified PM professionals will increase significantly, he added.

 

Even though IT Services is one of the least affected sectors during the ongoing pandemic, hiring the leading players in the sector had almost taken a complete pause in the first half of the year though it slowly started picking up July onwards. Most of the headcount growth by the sector however was driven by fresher hiring as firms started onbroading fresh talent hired from campuses in the previous year.

The IT contract hiring which was one of the earliest to take a hit during the pandemic has regained nearly 75 per cent of the pre-Covid level by September this year, said TeamLease which is one of the largest players in the space. “The drivers for this recovery were digitalization, new projects & product development across captives, global inhouse centres and development centres apart from BFSI, pharma, manufacturing.”

According to the staffing solutions provider, the New Year is expected to see a complete change in the working patterns with continuance of remote working continue while criteria of location for a job will become less important. Recruitment will become data-driven with the help of AI and the digital experience will be enhanced with respect to virtual screening, interviews and even on boarding the candidates, it added.