The job market, unlike the stock market, has maintained status quo after the election results. The Manpower quarterly recruiting study, scheduled to be released on Tuesday, June 9, is to show companies are not expected to make major changes in their 2009 Q3 (July-September) hiring plans.

Common themes in recruitment are being seen across sectors for the past one year. Companies continue to fill critical, strategic positions as they did during the peak of the downturn late last year. Smart companies took the opportunity to fill these positions during the slump as candidate salary expectations had been tempered.

Non-essential positions have been delayed, and recruitments at the bottom of the pyramid, such as entry-level and junior-level positions, have mostly been put on hold. A recent PwC report said a renewed business confidence in India post-elections has neither led companies to aggressively hire nor reduce headcount.

Sector patterns

Sector-wise recruitment patterns have been similar before and after elections. FMCG, healthcare and energy sector companies have largely remained constant in hiring practices. Manufacturing was impacted by the slowdown but was more stable than real estate, media, consulting, BFSI and IT, which continue to be in a ?watch mode?, with elections having no rub-off on them.

A sector that has seen rapid hiring and salary jump is telecom, especially by the new players. Mature operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance and Idea are mostly optimised in terms of their head count and are only hiring for critical positions. Bharti already has a headcount in the vicinity of 15,000, Vodafone 10,000 and Idea 8,000. Moreover, Bharti and Vodafone are getting into a ?managed services? model, wherein the vendors will take on the responsibility of the ?circles? for tower maintenance, field activities and monitoring.

Young telecom players with far fewer employees, such as Systema Telecom, Shyam Telecom, Telenor-Unitech, Datacom Solutions, Loop Mobile, Aircel, Swan Telecom and Tata GSM and Reliance GSM are the ones hiring heavily for their ?circles? as they ramp up for operations. ?Circle? in telecom parlance equals ?state? except for some states such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh which have two circles each.

Typically 200 employees are required to run ?circles? with variations depending on subscribers, subscription density and networked architecture. Since job-seekers are keen to join the bigger players because of their brand equity, the new players, who are as yet perceived as unstable, have to pay a premium to get the right talent. Young operators have to offer a 30% to 50% pay hike to new recruits when the industry norm has settled around 20%. Industry figures show new players are paying in the vicinity of Rs 35 lakh to general managers, Rs 65 to 70 lakh to vice-presidents and Rs 1 crore plus to senior vice-president and c-level executives. In some cases, they?re offering the entire salary as ?fixed? with no variable components, besides giving fancy designations and larger job profiles.

While young telecom operators are on a growth trajectory, other sectors such as retail and manufacturing have put new projects on hold. Retail is not entering new segments or expanding stores. Similarly, most manufacturing set-ups are not announcing any greenfield ventures.

In retail, Walmart opening its first outlet in Amritsar last weekend, albeit with a scaled down square footage, is significant. In fact, global players have seen their fortunes remaining stable in India, even when their businesses got hurt in their home markets. RPG Tyco Electronics is one good example.

Tyco Electronics, which employs 96,000 worldwide, recently announced a 20,000-staff layoff across all locations, but none in India. Raychem RPG, a 50:50 JV of the US major and RPG Enterprises, has retained its staff in India and reported a 40% growth. Companies such as General Motors, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, had one of its best ever years in India last year when it brought out the Spark model. Nortel Networks, which filed for bankruptcy in the US, saw booking orders of Rs 75 to 100 crore in India in the same year.

malvika.chandan@expressindia.com