With India Inc. going digital overnight to ensure business continuity, a TimesJobs survey reveals that a significant 68 per cent of human resources managers across sectors and startups, encouraged their employees to upskill and even offered in-house training and discounted certifications to make this happen.
While hiring, the skill most preferred by employers was tech savviness, followed by emotional intelligence.
The e-recruitment portal surveyed 1,735 HR managers working in different industrial sectors and startups to understand the HR learnings from 2020 and the skill roadmap for 2021. The study revealed that 63 per cent of HR managers had stalled their hiring plans in 2020, while about 26 per cent hired in very small numbers. There was a growth in roles ensuring digital continuity. The demand was highest for digital marketers (28 per cent) and customer relationship managers (18 per cent).
Back-end developers (28%), data science & analytics (22%) and cyber security (16%) personnel were more in demand than other experts.
In terms of upskilling, most employees preferred to get a certification in digital marketing (21%), followed by data analytics (12%). Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-led apps and software, 36 per cent recruiters faced the skills gap.
Sanjay Goyal, business head, TimesJobs and TechGig, rightly points out that India Inc. truly exhibited resilience in 2020.
He points out how 28 per cent employers – irrespective of their domains “hired digital marketers, and 21 per cent claimed that their employees preferred digital marketing for upskilling.” This clearly shows how fast companies were to transition from their traditional realms and adopt the digital modes to thrive in the virtual working environment.
The respondents were asked to outline the workplace trends for 2021. Most felt that Indian firms will continue working from home in 2021 too, some even feel they may extend WFH for at least two years!
A significant 58 per cent of the HR managers felt that WFH will be a future trend at their workplace. The potential of remote working will impact future hiring, said 51 per cent, while 21 per cent maintained that there was no such possibility.
The Survey clearly proved that the coming year will see maximum professionals being hired in the information technology (IT) domain, followed by healthcare and then e-commerce.
