A Mid-Life Opportunity: Hiring Outlook Favours The Old Guard

The job market is seeing rising demand for experienced professionals, while the search for young talent is stagnating as yet another K-shaped curve seems to be emerging.

In times of hiring correction, increasing demand for senior professionals with over 12 years of experience continues to dominate, while remaining flat for freshers and mid-experience level professionals, according to a Naukri Jobspeak report for January 2023.

Hiring for those with over 16 years of experience grew by 29% in January 2023, while hiring for those with 0-3 years of experience saw no change from a year ago.

"We are seeing an uptick in demand for professionals who are masters in certain skills," said Sashi Kumar, India sales head at Indeed.

Demand for professionals with 0-3 years of experience registered 4% growth in hiring activity over the last three months, Sekhar Garisa, chief executive officer at Foundit, said in a note. To be chosen, the candidate must tick all the right boxes to be "on the organisation’s requirements gravity", he said.

The trend is transient and is unlikely to continue for a protracted period of time, Kumar said.

While a lot of non-IT sectors started 2023 with a flourish, the situation in the IT sector remains one of concern, the data highlighted. Due to corrections in hiring, job growth in the Indian IT sector has declined by 25% as compared with last year, according to the Naukri Jobspeak report.

Weakened demand in campus placements is majorly due to layoffs in the Big Tech companies, Garisa said. As the global slowdown has taken its toll on businesses and impacted the demand for talent, companies are taking the off-campus mode to hire fresh candidates across different colleges, whether it is tier-1, 2 or 3, he said.

This blip is likely to correct itself over time as India’s macroeconomic indicators and the IT sector remains resilient and continues to grow, according to Kumar of Indeed.

To be sure, recent trends highlighted the growing demand for hires in the coming months. Startups in the tech space are looking to hire candidates from all engineering streams, according to Garisa.

Roles to do with emerging technologies such as blockchain, IoT, AI/ML, robotics, advanced automation, crypto, big data and analytics have high demand for engineering graduates. But, at the same time, organisations are facing a talent crunch for such roles and therefore, a degree in engineering is not imperative for a candidate who is a specialist in these niche technologies, he said.

Pritish Gandhi, director and India practice leader-executive compensation and governance at Aon, said that as long as the young professionals focus on upskilling themselves and acquiring niche skills, they will be in demand, irrespective of the hiring scenario. 

City-wise hiring, too, has taken a hit. Cities, which are heavily dependent on the IT sector as a job creation driver, like Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune have shown a decline of 20%, 12% and 11%, respectively, according to Naukri.