Pharma sector witnesses fourth month of consecutive dip in hiring numbers

In October 2012, recruitment levels for the pharmaceutical sector dipped by 5 per cent when compared to last month. The matter of worry is that a dipping hiring trend has been continuously witnessed for the last four months and October hiring is 12 per cent lower than June.

A year on year comparison also indicates a marginal dip in hiring levels. The key pharma hubs of the country, namely Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad also saw dips in their hiring levels by 9 per cent, 8 per cent and 2 per cent respectively in October when compared to the same time a month ago.

Commenting on the trend Hitesh Oberoi, CEO, InfoEdge India says, “Most employers are cautiously optimistic about their hiring plans. Recruiters will continue with selective hiring for the next few months.”

These index numbers are in line with predictions from pharma sector recruiters in a survey where 11 per cent of them had indicated hiring freeze. Most of the them had said that they will adopt a cautious approach and not go over board.

Methodology: The Naukri Job Speak index is on the basis of job listings added to the site every month. To calculate the index, job listings added to the site in July 2008 have been taken as 1000. The subsequent months have been indexed with data of July 2008. The monthly report shows hiring trends across industry sectors, geography and functional areas. There might be high volatility for certain fringe cases like smaller cities, niche industries etc. owing to a small base, but more than 42,000 clients using Naukri.com leads to high reliability of the data.