Posted by US-based IT services major Accenture has more than 3,000 job openings across cities in India. A significant number of these jobs were posted over the last week.
Industry watchers say this is a strong indicator that despite Covid-19, hiring is seeing signs of normalcy, contrary to the sentiments a few months back when companies had cut hiring to save costs.
Accenture employs about 5 lakh employees and close to 2 lakh are from India. Reports had suggested that the company would lay off close to 5 percent of its workforce globally, axing 25,000 jobs.
According to the Australian Financial Review, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, in an internal meeting, commented that the company might not replace the workforce it had laid off given the demand environment.
Given that background, these job openings, analysts said, should be looked at as a positive trend amid the pandemic. Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services, pointed out that hiring and layoffs are happening side by side because there is a mismatch in demand and supply of expertise. “In the normal course, companies would reskill their resources,” he said. However when projects have to start at short notice, and existing resources do not have the expertise, companies have to hire from the market to bridge the gap, he explained.
Job openings
Of the 3,366 total job openings in the country, a significant portion of the roles are tech jobs. There are more than 400 openings for core tech skills.
For instance, there are about 68 roles that are in the data and analytics space. This includes roles of data scientists, data engineers, digital marketing analytics, data visualisation skills, and social media analytics. Another 360 jobs are for skills in areas like cloud, infrastructure and network security.
In addition, there are 200 roles open for project and delivery managers. The rest of the roles are for sales, human resource managers, finance and accounting positions.
Most of these roles are for experienced professionals. Pareekh Jain, founder, Pareekh Consulting, pointed out that the normal pay hikes by multinational firms are 20 percent or higher.
The Accenture jobs site did not disclose the salary but an experienced IT professional can command anywhere between Rs 10-15 lakh or more depending on skills and location.
Though Accenture’s results, released last month, missed estimates and saw lower growth, the quarter saw the second highest new bookings. This is an indication that there is huge demand for IT and digital services.
However, these may not be in legacy services but in the emerging skills landscape.
For instance, Accenture has acquired at least 15 companies between April and September and most of them are in new-age technologies, a trend reflective of where the demand is coming from.
The company registered revenue of $44 billion for the year ended August 2020, with digital, cloud and security services accounting for about 70 percent of the revenue.
Recently, Accenture said it would invest $3 billion over the next three years to help clients in their digital transformation journey.
Roles in demand
Many roles are in demand, including new-age tech such as cloud, DevOps, python programming and Full Stack Developer.
In an earlier conversation with Moneycontrol, Sunil C, head – specialised staffing, Teamlease Digital, a temp staffing firm, said that most of the companies are looking for resources who come with a significant share of experience.
This is challenging as there are only limited resources available with such talent. VV Apparao, Chief Human Resources Officer, HCL Tech, also pointed out that the company is accelerating its reskilling efforts as not all skills are available readily.