Quess Corp Unveils ‘QJobs’ For Blue-Collar Recruitment; Aims To Get 1 Million Jobs On Platform
Through QJobs, the company aims to address the issues of job creation, job discoverability and job matching.
Business services provider Quess Corp on Thursday announced the launch of QJobs - a digital platform to help blue-collar job seekers find work - and said it aims to bring one million jobs on the platform.
Through QJobs, the company aims to address the issues of job creation, job discoverability and job matching by providing a comprehensive solution that allows employers to find the right talent, while allowing job seekers to showcase their skills and find employment closer to their location.
"Quess is India's largest employer with the bulk of our workforce in the addressable segment of blue-collar (workforce) in India. We recruit almost about 1,00,000 people every year...post acquisition of Monster, our understanding of technology and dynamics of how job portals work, has been very steep and accurate," Quess Corp Chairman and MD Ajit Isaac told reporters in a virtual briefing.
He added that since the onset of the pandemic and the crisis in the job market that came along with it, it was very apparent that there was a need for a connector between demand and supply in the blue- collar space.
Isaac explained that the workforce size in India is about 480 million, of which 220 million have farm jobs, 120 million are migrant workers (with minimal skills), and 75 million are blue-collar (entry level) workers.
Grey-collar, white-collar and orange-collar workforce is estimated to be 15 million, 6 million and 4 million, respectively.
He noted that QJobs will help find people most fit to do a job, and ensure that they are onboarded with the least friction.
According to a survey commissioned by Quess Corp, demand for contractual employees and specialised gig workers have been up by 30% over the last year and demand for contractual and gig workforce is expected to increase, as employers variabilise their headcount and focus on outcome-driven programmes.
Quess Corp Executive Director and Group CEO Suraj Moraje said the company aims to get to a million jobs.
"At this point, we have 100,000 jobs. We have three million candidates and 200,000 downloads almost, we'd have 1,000-plus companies on the platform. So we want to get to a million jobs and that's what we're pushing for," he added.
Stating that the company has not decided on monetisation yet, Moraje said candidates will not be charged but Quess could look at charging recruiters.
"(Also) we spend about Rs 30-40 crore every year on recruiters and for us, even a 20% improvement in efficiency by far justifies our investment in this asset. For us, just the internal business benefits justifie our investment in building this," he added.
Moraje said Monster will continue to be the engine for white and orange collar, and blue and grey collar will be addressed through QJobs.
Asked about job cuts, Moraje said: "Our experience right now is job cuts are behind us, we are seeing hiring activity start, you can look at data, we are seeing unemployment go down. I think we're now entering a different phase of our economy, should the Covid-19 numbers continue to go down we're actually very enthusiastic that the coming months we'll start seeing a hiring pick-up".
The company noted that there has been a steady demand in job roles such as delivery staff, drivers, security staff, facility management staff, beauticians, maintenance workers and others.
A significant increase in the number of applications per job has been witnessed for many roles, such as in sales and marketing, and data entry and back office profiles, as compared to pre-Covid-19 levels, it added.
With the shift to online or app-based consumption post-Covid-19, sectors like e-commerce, retail and FMCG are fast emerging as demand creators for roles like delivery personnel and sales executives.
As consumer activity rises during the festive season, logistics is likely to drive demand. Further, sectors like banking and fintech are also seeing growing demand for administrative and back office roles.
The QJobs app has advanced matching capabilities to help job seekers discover the right job, and also provisions for the creation of a digital profile called 'Job passports' that can be updated with their skills in a certain domain.
QJobs will also offer users access to resources such as resume building as well as certification modules, to develop new skills or upskill themselves over time and highlight the same. Available in five regional languages, the beta phase of the app saw over 70,000 jobs being posted across India.
"With QJobs, we hope to address the talent mismatch faced by the industry, which has been a long-standing concern. By creating a pipeline of qualified, reliable and easily available talent for employers to tap into, we hope to reduce the time required to onboard talent, thus ensuring rapid uptake and deployment of resources from a varied pool of skill sets, which is customised to cater to the employers' requirements," Sekhar Garisa, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Emerging Business at Quess Corp said.