As the corporate sector continues to evolve, a recent report highlights the predicament faced by fresh graduates seeking job opportunities.
Delineating the challenges faced by new graduates, Indeed data revealed that fresher hiring has been on a downward trend over the last three years, since the pandemic.
“Since December 2021, fresher job postings have declined by 8.5% whereas job clicks have declined by 34.3%. In the last one year, there has been a 4.2% decline in the jobs posted for freshers in December 2023 compared to December 2022,” Global matching and hiring platform, Indeed mentioned in a press statement.
Given the rapid changes in the global market over the last few years, large-scale fresher hiring has been upended. Companies are presently cautious, and choosing to see how the next few quarters pan out before committing to hiring. However, this does not mean that fresher hiring is at a standstill, other areas such as admin, sales, and marketing among others continue to have opportunities for new graduates, Head of Sales at Indeed India, Sashi Kumar said.
Declining trend with a silver lining
The demand from graduates for fresher roles has also drastically declined by 37.4% between December 2022 and 2023. Various reasons can be attributed to this declining trend such as hesitation to enter the job market during industry volatilities, skill mismatch amidst a changing tech landscape, and differing salary expectations.
Despite the slowdown in hiring in IT sectors, the tech sector still was the second largest recruiter for fresher roles in the last year. While fresher hiring in tech is on a decline YoY, in comparison to other sectors, they still recruit a large portion. Admin along with Sales, Marketing, and Management rounding up the top five sectors that hired freshers.
The Administration sector is at the forefront of hiring freshers with an 11.50% share of overall fresher job postings. Further, Tech and Software, Sales, Marketing, and Management closely follow the admin sector with 10.29%, 6.39%, 5.47%, and 4.87% respectively.
Human Resources, Customer Support/Relations, and the Education sector are at the bottom with 4.03%, 3.40%, and 2.50% share.
New-age digital skills are a must
As the rapidly changing hiring landscape continues to grow, freshers need to arm themselves with new-age digital skills that can be a competitive advantage for them as companies begin to hire.
This trend is particularly noticeable in the tech sector, where companies are reevaluating their recruitment strategies in light of market dynamics and skilled individuals.