None of the tech companies are hiring and in fact they are sacking and have frozen hiring. But the data which has come from the prestigious institutes are telling us a completely different story. So why is there a mismatch?
I don’t think there is a big mismatch. Yes there are some shake ups that organizations are doing based on how they view their future roadmap. There are redundancies that are being seen but side by side the fact that organizations are looking for high quality talent and people who bring specific skill set essentially clearly sends out this message and a signal that it is not that the long term outlook is dim.
Whenever organizations go to campuses it is a common understanding that it means the overall long term outlook still remains bright. However organizations are focused more on productivity, efficiency skill set rather than creating large massive employment base within the organization.
So clearly there is a valuation that is being extra or a premium that organizations are willing to pay for higher skill set and people who have the ability to learn or bring in the new skill sets are probably more relevant to the organization.
So I think it also means that everyone who is currently engaged in the workforce wherever they are it is pretty much clear that one needs to constantly be focussing on self improvement, learning and upskilling because organizations will be having a very clinical approach now in terms of how the future would be and essentially this is how you are gaining muscles, profitability, productivity, growth and for that hard choices would be made.
I feel that this also is something that has happened cyclically every 10 years. We see this process especially in technical job roles, it happens globally that there will be a massive shake off and a massive trend of layoffs and redundancies and again there is a bounce back in terms of looking at the future with a fresh approach. So I think that is what is happening and that is what we are witnessing.
I just want to understand what is the pay package mix this time around or this year versus what we have seen in the past?
They all sound very attractive for sure but I think that organizations are trying to create a much more attractive variable compensation structure as well. What I understand is that there are aspects aligned in terms of very attractive incentives. There are hybrid working certain compensations related to that, there are some retention bonus which essentially means that organizations are also keeping in mind that we live in a time where there are going to be certain amount of uncertainties. Certain work conditions have completely changed over the last three years and hence the companies are looking at how talent can be incentivized in the right manner and yet not increase their fixed cost at their end.
But what is more interesting is that the median salary seems to have gone up and some of it could be on account of the fact that there seems to be more clarity in terms of the way forward given perhaps the pandemic is behind us and these are investments that organizations are keen to make.
So it is good times honestly for those who are in the tech sector or students and kids who are in the tech sectors. So I guess overall it is very encouraging and I have always believed that whenever campus hiring takes off people are betting more aggressively into the future.
But I think what I will be very eager to understand is not what happens in some of these elite professional colleges. It is very important to understand what happens in the larger cross section of India and whether those youth are benefitting from some of these interesting packages is something that I would be keenly watching out for.
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