Like many people of his age, 28-year-old Piyush Sinha cannot make up his mind. The team leader with a Gurgaon-based BPO firm is sitting on four job offers. But he is waiting for the fifth before he decides. "I didn't apply for even one," he boasts. Headhunters have just been calling him with bigger salaries and better job profiles.

Not too far away in Delhi's Pamposh Enclave, Arvind Singhal, chairman of market research firm KSA Technopak, is facing problems. No, it is not clients or lost business deals. It is his inability to fill vacancies that's worrying him. He urgently needs an experienced hr head. "Not many are available. Worse, some take offer letters but do not turn up," says Singhal.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN 2005

FASTEST GROWTH Headhunters predict the number of new jobs will grow at 22% in 2005 as against 18% in 2004 HOTTEST SECTORS IT & ITES sector will be the top job creator with 2.75 lakh. Textiles to follow with over 2 lakh BIGGER PAY HIKES India will see the fattest pay hike of 14.2% in 2005, the highest in the past five years CITIES WITH MOST JOBS The National Capital Region will generate the maximum number of jobs across all sectors MORE JOB HOPPING 24.5% of ITES staff switch jobs every year, followed by 23.7% in the retailing sector

Hundreds of miles away in Mumbai, Vijay Kashyap, vice-president (HR) of Shopper's Stop, is chalking out business plans. The biggest stumbling block is not investment or getting business but hiring people. "Anybody who has any experience gets poached," says Kashyap wryly. He loses at least 75 per cent of his employees every year.

Job seekers have never had it so good. The number of jobs on offer is likely to surge by almost 22 per cent this year as against 18 per cent in 2004. These are estimates of India's leading headhunters who arrived at these figures based on their sample of job placements which are primarily executive level jobs. The trends are representative of the urban job market. The last time India saw a buoyant growth in job market was in 1999 but 2005 is far superior in numbers and its geographical and sectoral spread-from it and ITEs to telecom, financial services, retailing and the labour-intensive textile sector. It seems things will only get better. Good hikes will keep the party going. According to the latest survey of salaries by Hewitt Associates, 2005 will see the best hikes in the past five years (see graphic). "India will see the best hikes in Asia Pacific," says Nischae Suri, Asia Pacific consulting leader, Hewitt Associates.

India Inc is on a hiring spree. The IT and BPO sectors alone are estimated to hire 2,75,000 people in 2005, 30-35 per cent more than it did in 2004. Textile, the biggest turnaround story in Indian industry, will hire more than 2,00,000 workers this year (see graphic). But beyond these impressive numbers, what is more heartening is that this job boom is unlike any in the past. It cuts across all sectors-from textiles and automobiles to healthcare and retailing. It is also not confined to metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore and is being witnessed even in second-rung cities like Nashik, Coimbatore, Chandigarh and Kochi. "Looking for business growth, companies are setting up offices in smaller cities," says Ajit Issac, managing director, Adecco PeopleOne.

Employees of all qualifications are in demand. Though engineers and MBAs from IITs and IIMs remain the most coveted, plain graduates are being sought out for the surging BPO and retailing sectors. Even semi-literate and unskilled workers are in demand by sectors such as textile and retail. "In the next three years, one thing which will not be in short supply is jobs," says Ram Kumar, senior general manager and head, human resources, ICICI Bank.

India Inc is not the only one betting on Indian manpower. Global corporations too are flocking to India to hire executives for their operations across the world. "MNCs are offering dollar salaries to lure Indians overseas," says Ashok Reddy, managing director, Teamlease Services. MNCs in the Gulf, south-east Asia and Europe are hiring Indians for jobs as diverse as nurses, teachers, engineers, pilots and cabin crew. The trend is showing up on Indian campuses-during this year's summer placement, as many as 54 students from IIM Calcutta landed overseas job offers against 17 last year.

JOB SPEAK

"THIS IS THE BEST JOB MARKET I HAVE SEEN IN YEARS." ARUN TADANKI, RESIDENT & MD, Monster Asia "THE LEVELS OF BOTH SALARIES AND EMPLOYEE ATTRITION ARE RISING." ARVIND SINGHAL, HAIRMAN, KSA Technopak "LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES AND GLOBAL EXPOSURE ARE KEY DEMANDS." HEMA RAVICHANDAR, SR V-P & GROUP HEAD (HR), Infosys "EDUCATIONAL OVERHAUL IS MUST FOR THE NEEDS OF NEW SECTORS." KIRAN KARNIK, PRESIDENT, NASSCOM "SECTORS LIKE HEALTHCARE WILL BE BIG JOB GENERATORS IN THE FUTURE." DALJIT SINGH, CEO, Fortis Healthcare

There are sector specific triggers for the job boom. In textiles and pharma, WTO-induced policy changes have infused new dynamism into the industry. "Airlines and airports are suddenly waking up with growth-oriented policies," says Tarun Bali, CEO, ABC Consultants. Telecom is surging on the back of falling tariffs while banking and retail are sizzling due to low interest rates and booming hire purchase. Many sectors like retailing, telecom, insurance and financial services were very small till five years ago.

This brings a new respectability to a range of jobs once considered demeaning by middle-class India. Even plain vanilla graduates who can speak fluent English are being hired by fast-food restaurants, coffee shops, large departmental stores and telemarketing firms as delivery boys and sales staff. Their lack of experience is no longer an issue because almost all sunrise sectors provide extensive training to freshers.

Apart from these new trends, there has been a fundamental change in the mindset too. Job security is slowly yet steadily giving way to employment security. Layoff is not as big a stigma as people change jobs and experiment with a variety of employment conditions-consultancy, short-term projects and temporary jobs. The growing mobility of the workforce is also enabling better shuffling of the labour pool from one city to another.

Some caveats, however, are in order. Despite the buzz about the urban job boom, India's overall unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world at 9.2 per cent. A recent Planning Commission report indicates that it will rise to 11 per cent by 2007 which will mean about 45 million jobless Indians. In a country where 7.6 million people enter the workforce every year, that may not be surprising. Experts also argue that the rigidity of the government data has failed to take into account the rapid changes at the workplace. It tracks mostly organised sector employment which is barely 7 per cent (or 28 million) of the total workforce of 400 million in India. It also does not include some key emerging job sectors, particularly in the services sector. Not surprisingly, the 945 government-managed employment exchanges-dependent on government vacancies-have become less relevant because of shrinking government jobs. "Thankfully, with the rapid growth in temporary jobs, a huge cyclical unorganised sector will start showing up in the government data," says Pandya Rajan, managing director, Ma Foi, an hr consultancy firm.

At least partially, the high unemployment rate can be attributed to a significant gap in the skill sets that companies are looking for and what job seekers are equipped with. Even as the economy surges, India's education infrastructure has not kept pace. Says Kiran Karnik, president, NASSCOM: "Our colleges need to equip students with right and relevant skills."

India Today decided to take stock of the job boom. Predicting employment trends can be a risky business. Especially when it is not well tracked and government data has serious sectoral gaps. We reached out to the top headhunters in the country. The biggest job portal in Asia, Monster.com, has done a comprehensive survey to capture the changes in the workplace. The package also includes the mood on the campuses across the country where the rising tide of employment first shows up.

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