Busines-to-consumer(B2C) space, including e-commerce, has witnessed a sharp decline in hiring between November 2015 to April 2016 as compared to business-to-business (B2B) segment, which has picked up considerably, a report by PTI said.
“For the last six months, there has been a rise in hiring in the B2B segment as they are now more open to matching expectations of candidates in tune of market reality,” CEO and Co-founder, Vijay Sharma, Belong, a talent solutions company, was quoted as saying by PTI.
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“Moreover, many B2B firms have a niche or specialised offering like analytics or product development that are seeing greater adoption from their customers,” he added.
There has been 32 per cent increase in hiring in B2B companies in six months during November 2015 and April 2016 compared with May-October 2015, Sharma told PTI.
On the other hand, the B2C category has witnessed a steady decline in hiring due to internal restructuring and consolidation the companies are going through.
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“There has been a 61 per cent drop in hiring during November 2015 and April 2016 compared with May-October 2015 in the B2C segment as most companies are restructuring their teams internally. Having done aggressive hiring for the last year, they are now re-assessing their organisational structures to plan for future growth,” he added.
“There is also consolidation happening in the B2C segment,” he said.
As per PTI: Even as there has been a higher decline in hiring at junior levels in the B2C space, companies are going in for “strategic hiring” at leadership positions.
“I hope there will not be much of a decline in the B2C market since the market is growing, but there are some segments like e-commerce and retail where hiring will come down by 50-60 per cent as against 2015,” Echoing his point, MD, GlobalHunt India, Sunil Goel was quoted as saying by PTI.
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Goel said there was over-hiring of resources by companies in race to increase valuation and cushioning of PE firms, which will now align towards right sizing.
“Also, at project or inception stage, a number of resources are required. But once the industry or the business concept becomes stable, efficiency increases and manpower requirement goes down,” he added.
B2B business provides industry-specific solutions and makes them simple, optimising their resources and manpower requirements, and makes companies efficient and structured as per the business vision and mission.
“The e-commerce sector (as an industry) is predicted to grow. However, hiring in this sector is expected to decline due to consolidation in the industry. We expect hiring in the sector to go down by around 10-15%,” Michael Page India Associate Director Mohit Bharti, was quoted as saying by PTI.
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He predicted that hiring is likely to decline in the e-commerce and start-up sector and not in other B2C verticals.
“There has been a decline in jobs at the middle-junior level in the e-commerce segment, but at mid-senior and executive level, the drop is minimal as organisations still need good talent to drive their growth and profitability graph,” he said.
There has been 32 per cent increase in hiring in B2B companies in six months during November 2015 and April 2016 compared with May-October 2015
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