B2B hiring grows 32%, B2C faces restructuring woes

B2C category has witnessed a steady decline due to consolidation the companies are going through

With adoption of newer technologies, hiring in business-to-business (B2B) segment has picked up, but it has fallen considerably in business-to-consumer(B2C) space, including e-commerce, experts say.

"For the last six months, there has been a rise in hiring in the B2B segment as they are now more open to matching expectations of candidates in tune of market reality," Vijay Sharma, CEO and Co-founder, Belong, a talent solutions company, told PTI here.

"Moreover, many B2B firms have a niche or specialised offering like analytics or product development that are seeing greater adoption from their customers," he added.

He said there has been 32 per cent increase in hiring in B2B companies in six months during November 2015 and April 2016 compared with May-October 2015.

On the other hand, the B2C category has witnessed a steady decline in hiring due to internal restructuring and consolidation the companies are going through.

"There has been a 61 per cent drop in hiring during November 2015 and April 2016 compared with May-October 2015 in the B2C segment as most companies are restructuring their teams internally. Having done aggressive hiring for the last year, they are now re-assessing their organisational structures to plan for future growth," he added.

"There is also consolidation happening in the B2C segment," he said.

Even as there has been a higher decline in hiring at junior levels in the B2C space, companies are going in for "strategic hiring" at leadership positions, he noted.

Echoing his point, GlobalHunt India MD Sunil Goel hoped there will not be much of a decline in the B2C market since the market is growing, but there are some segments like e-commerce and retail where hiring will come down by 50-60 per cent as against 2015.

Goel said there was over-hiring of resources by companies in race to increase valuation and cushioning of PE firms, which will now align towards right sizing.

"Also, at project or inception stage, a number of resources are required. But once the industry or the business concept becomes stable, efficiency increases and manpower requirement goes down," he added.

B2B business provides industry-specific solutions and makes them simple, optimising their resources and manpower requirements, and makes companies efficient and structured as per the business vision and mission.

Michael Page India Associate Director Mohit Bharti predicted that hiring is likely to decline in the e-commerce and start-up sector and not in other B2C verticals.

"The e-commerce sector (as an industry) is predicted to grow. However, hiring in this sector is expected to decline due to consolidation in the industry. We expect hiring in the sector to go down by around 10-15 per cent," he added.

According to him, there has been a decline in jobs at the middle-junior level in the e-commerce segment, but at mid-senior and executive level, the drop is minimal as organisations still need good talent to drive their growth and profitability graph.