The war for talent in India

More than a month ago I had written about Talent shortage in HR in India? and the latest India Today magazine confirms my fears. (see, that's a way to say "I told you so"!)

HR Experts rank in the list of "niche talent" which are seeing a shortage of talent. The others being Pilots, Merchandisers, Auto Designers, Architects and Urban Planners, Actuaries, CEOs (!), Dieticians, Graphic Artists and Drilling Experts (for oil!).

Some other notable numbers from the article are:

16 million new jobs are likely to be created this year. Services will lead the way with IT and ITES sectors adding 350,000 new people, followed by Retailing with 125,000 jobs, Financial Services with 120,000 jobs, Telecom with 100,000 and Hospitality with 50,000 jobs.

The Hewitt Annual Salary Increase survey also finds that in the Asia Pac region, Indians will get the best salary hikes (13.7%) followed by Phillipines awith 8.1% increase.

40 million is the number of registered unemployed in the country.
27 million are employed in the organized sector.
333 million are either underemployed or belong to the unorganized sector.

There are 20,000 recruitment firm in the country.
3,000 of them are in Bangalore !

Barely 10% of corporate India uses formal executive search, feels Rajeev Vasudeva of Egon Zehnder.

By 2010 most labour markets barring India, would be short of people, feels Monster's India head Arun Tadanki.

There are talks of specialized Accounting and Bamking recruitment firm Michael Page International planning to enter India, the article notes.

Classified ad revenues for print job ads have remained almost flat the last 4-5 years, while online firms have been growing at 15-20%. They cost 10% of the print classifieds cost for an organization.

Oh my, we are in for interesting times ahead ! And specifically about the scarcity of HR talent, I told you so!