Hiring in 2019 to be strongest after 4 years; bullish opportunities in IT, auto, travel sectors, says India Skills report

New Delhi: Hiring intent in 2019 is expected to be strongest after a gap of four years on the back of bullish employment opportunities in IT, automotive, travel and hospitality sectors, a report said on Thursday. According to India Skills report, almost 64 percent employers have a positive outlook on hiring, 20 percent said they will hire the same number of people as 2018 and only handful have a negative outlook for 2019. Besides, the appetite for fresh hiring in the coming year has more than doubled to 15 percent from a mere 7 percent in 2017. [caption id=“attachment_106812” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The report noted that even though hiring volumes might not reach the scale of 2010-11, the situation would still be better than what it was in the last 2-3 years. “It is encouraging to see a positive hiring intent this year and even more to see tech hiring getting back in action,” PeopleStrong Co-founder, and CEO Pankaj Bansal said, adding that the increase in hiring intent was not limited to organisations of a certain size, but was spread across companies of different sizes and sectors. As per the report, tech hiring is expected to make a comeback in the coming year. In this space, design and analytics jobs would be the most sought-after ones in the overall set, while demand would increase for specialist technologies in the space of artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning. Besides software, engineering, automotive, travel, and hospitality will see a considerable upswing in their hiring numbers next year, the report noted. On gender diversity, the survey says female employability this year has increased to 46 percent from 38 percent last year. Male employability score has grown marginally to 48 percent from 47 percent last year. Of all the new hiring in 2019, almost 15-20 percent would comprise of women, the report further said. According to the nationwide study, the top three states in terms of employability are Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Delhi. While engineers continue to be most employable, electronics and communication engineering (ECE) & information technology (IT) have the highest employability rate. India Skills Report 2019, is a joint initiative by HR solutions and HR technology company PeopleStrong, and Global Talent Assessment firm Wheebox, in collaboration with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) along with partners like UNDP, AICTE, and AIU.