Indian IT and It-enabled sector is expected to witness increased hiring of contractual employees post COVID-19 era as the government has gradually started its first phase of unlocking.

Usually, contractual employees are the first ones to be scrutinized during the downturn as IT-ITeS look for contractual staff to fit their project-based work.

According to the Indian Staffing Federation, 500,000 employees were contractual or temporary workers out of 4 million IT-ITeS workforces, which is expected to spike at an annual pace of 13% by this fiscal year to 720,000.

Since pandemic, hiring at the topmost It firms has been slowed down or completely frozen as most of their clients are from the US and Europe and this is likely to change as the recovery has already started in several countries of Europe.

“Germany is already in its last phase of lockdown along with Spain and Italy opening up slowly and hence, during the months of June-July, all the IT giants with the majority of client base in Europe, will resume, and the lost will need to be caught up with by hiring new resources”, stated Lohit Bhatia, president, ISF. “Contractual hiring is looking to be a credible mode of employment because of the flexibility it offers.”

Acara Solutions India has been on the top of the staffing and recruitment trends, and we believe that there will be a gradual shift towards a Gig Economy and Gig Workers across the job market with several industries opting for the same business model.

In the past few weeks, staffing and recruitment firms have seen an increased number of hiring from IT firms in the BFSI domain.  Job portals are experiencing more jobs being posted with remote working options. Indeed, India’s job portal accounts that job searches for remote work have increased over 377% as a share of all searches from February to May 2020. Job postings for remote working and for work-from-home models have also seen a hike by 168% in the same period.