Insights on India’s talent landscape as it gears up for a $5 trillion economy: India Skills Report 2020

Despite the gloomy outlook that is impacting Indian economy and the hiring plans of organisations in the last three quarters, hiring will look up in 2020, according to India Skills Report 2020. While there are sectors where a muted growth would be experienced, banking, financial services, insurance and e-commerce business companies have shared a positive hiring intent for the coming year.

Powered by Wheebox, A Global Talent Assessment Company, India Skills Report is a joint initiative with Taggd by PeopleStrong (India’s largest Recruitment Process Outsourcing provider), Confederation of Indian Industries, in collaboration with UNDP, AICTE and AIU. India Skills Report 2020 aims to provide an overview of the supply of talent and the demand from industry and brings together the readiness of our present talent pool for new-age jobs or job types and the skills that employers are today seeking in prospective employees. 

The report is a culmination of insights gathered from Wheebox National Employability Test (WNET), a nation-wide assessment that reached over 300,000 graduates from 3,500 institutions across 28 states and nine Union Territories of India and the India Hiring Intent Survey (IHIS), primary survey of over 150 enterprises across nine major industries conducted by Taggd (PeopleStrong’s Recruitment Business).

The talent demand landscape

The overall quantitative and qualitative sentiment measured for the hiring intent for 2020 is largely optimistic across a few industries. On the talent demand side, IHIS this year revealed that almost 56 percent of employers have a positive outlook on hiring, which is slightly lower than last year when this number was 64 percent. Candidates with 1-5 years of experience continue to remain in maximum demand (over 40 percent) while freshers make up for only 15 percent of the overall talent demand. Basis the educational qualifications in demand, engineers have been expected to be hired the most (30 percent), closely followed by general graduates (BA/B.com/BSc.). Whereas Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra are the states preferred the most by employers for hiring talent.

Speaking on the occasion, Devashish Sharma, Chief Business Officer, Taggd and Founding Member, Group Chief People Officer – PeopleStrong said, “In an economic environment where most business are taking a cautious approach towards business plans in the coming year, it is amazing to see some green-shoots. And we are hopeful that this would further improve if the necessary reforms are launched in time. In this year’s report, in addition to quantitative analysis, we have also collated qualitative inputs from the demand side from our Decoding Jobs 2019 - The Think Tank Series and are hopeful that our suggestions would help the academia and the government to take necessary steps and bridge the talent supply and demand gap.” 

The challenges and opportunities in talent supply

With almost half of India’s current population under the age of 26, the country needs to continuously find ways to keep its workforce skilled, to meet the demands of its industries while also seizing global opportunities by supplying talent to the international job markets. 

As per the WNET, on the talent supply side, of all the students passing out this year from various streams, more than 46 percent are employable. MBA-holders have taken over the slot of the highest employable cohort among the various course graduates with an employability score of 54%. The position was held by engineers the previous year. Employability for pass-outs of B.Pharma, B.com, BA and Polytechnics has witnessed an appreciable increase at about 15%. The report also reveals that most of these employable graduates are found in the states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. 

The role of women in the $5 trillion economy

The report also commented on the role women need to play in order to make the $5 trillion economy a reality and shared that though female employability this year has increased marginally to 47 percent from 46 percent last year, the gender parity as the hiring intent for 2020 remains a concern. The report reflects a likely hiring ratio of 71:29 for male to female candidates in 2020, with the widest disproportions expected to be seen in the automotive sector. 

Nirmal Singh, Co-founder and CEO, Wheebox shared, “India’s talent supply landscape is very complex, yet interesting. With the kind of change organisations are experiencing, a lot of work needs to be done on the supply side to keep up with the pace. This is visible in the employability levels of graduates, which though improving is yet to cross the 50 percent mark.” 

States with the highest employability 

Moving further towards the states with the highest employable talent, of all states and union territories, the top three states were found to be Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. It is interesting to note that Maharashtra (up from 9th position) and Tamil Nadu (up from 10th position) improved their position remarkably this year to become the most employable states. States that registered a dip in their ranking were West Bengal (2nd in last year) and Haryana which could not make into the top ten list.

Download your copy of India Skills Report 2020

The India Skills Report 2020 was launched by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Ministry of Labour and employment at CII’s National Skills Summit in New Delhi on 10th Dec 2019 in New Delhi, and is available for downloading here.

India’s first Decoding Jobs sectoral dossiers on the talent landscape 

To supplement the report, Taggd also released India’s first Decoding Jobs sectoral dossiers on the talent landscape for leading industries which included insights on the hiring intent and trends for 2020. The sectoral dossiers bring together the readiness of our present talent pool for new-age jobs in a particular industry across parameters such as skills, education, work experience, gender diversity etc. that employers like you are today seeking in their prospective employees. Copies of the sectoral dossiers, may be downloaded here: Automotive, BFSI, IT, E-commerce, Pharmaceuticals and Engineering & Manufacturing.