Overall IT-BPM headcount in the country is expected to grow 7.5% during the same duration to 4.85 million employees in the sector. Teamlease expects the demand for contractual hiring in the IT-BPM sector to grow 17% YoY by March 2022 led by the massive hiring mandates of IT services and GCCs. This trend will continue for the rest of the year as the war for Digital Skills intensifies in the Indian IT-BPM market, said Sunil Chemmankotil, head- specialised staffing, Teamlease Digital, speaking to ET.
“The US market employs about 9 million in the IT-BPM sector with around 18 % contract staffing there, okay. But in the Indian market, out of 4.8 million employed, you will find only 3% contracting. While 18% is too far, but 3-6% contracting is quite possible in the near future for India given the current demand environment,” said Chemmankotil.
However, much like full time employees, this segment is also witnessing high attrition, he added. With attrition in the contract employee segment expected to reach 49% by March 2022, Chemmankotil added that the segment is attracting talent even from full time tech employees.
“Interestingly this year, we are seeing a lot of people moving from permanent employees to contract staffing. It is around 15% this year compared to 8-10% in the previous two years. Some of the reasons for that can be because a lot of people want to pick up jobs closer to home and they also want to quickly switch to interesting projects,” he added.
Teamlease estimates that India’s technology employment will grow from 4.8 million to 10 million in the next few years with hiring demands for both third-party providers and captive global development centres. IT services companies, Global Capability Centers (GCC), and Product Development companies are the top contract staffing consumers and they contribute in excess of 70% and the same trend will continue to exist in the near future too.
Besides very strong full-time employment growth in IT-BPM, IT contract staffing also has shown the best numbers hired in FY2022 Q1 – 20,500 and Q2 – 21,850 and will continue to grow in Q3 at 24,400 as overall contractual hiring, the report noted. Almost 30% of the demand in the IT-BPM sector is in digital skills led by demand in cloud and DevOps, cyber security, full stack development, data analytics, AI/ML and RPA among others.
“Enterprise customers’ talent acquisition team is mandated to hire in excess of 10% through contractual mode. 80% employers whom we engage with commit 6-9 months as contractual duration with a possibility of increasing additional 6 months as an extension to ease their business planning,” he added.
