Hiring of NRIs down by 8 Per cent in July-September quarter of 2011

NEW DELHI: Hiring of non-resident Indians (NRIs) by homegrown companies witnessed a marginal decline in the July-September quarter of 2011 due to growing economic uncertainty.

According to a study, a recruitment tendering platform, hiring of NRIs dropped by 8 per cent during the July-September quarter of 2011, compared to the preceding quarter.

"Beginning the second quarter of the current fiscal year, we have seen healthy hiring activity in NRI professionals, but suddenly, from the last week of August, 2011, recruitment activities sharply declined. Overall hiring activity is not as good as we had expected in the beginning of this year," MyHiringClub.com Founder and CEO Rajesh Kumar said.

"These days, we are receiving continuous mails from NRI job seekers to help them in finding jobs in India. In the first quarter, we had seen increase of 25-30 per cent in NRI job seekers traffic," Kumar added.

The survey, conducted among 423 corporate and 723 recruitment consultants, said the segments that registered the maximum fall in NRI recruitment during the period under review were IT and IT-enabled (21 per cent) and banking and financial services (2 per cent).

In contrast, hiring of NRIs in the telecom space was up by 5 per cent, pharma and healthcare sector (2 per cent), automobile and manufacturing (2 per cent) and FMCG (2 per cent).

In terms of cities, a 34 per cent increase was visible in NRI professional hiring activity in Delhi/NCR region, followed by 32 per cent in Mumbai.

However, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata had seen negative hiring activity in the second quarter of FY'12, compared to the first quarter.

Looking ahead, NRI hiring activity would witness good momentum in the next few years.

"We expect to see more positions open in coming years for NRI professionals. In today's scenario, NRI job seekers are very keen to come back and work in India," Success Mantra Management Director Kailash Saini said.

He further said, "Sectors like infrastructure, IT, automobile and healthcare are preferring to hire NRIs due to the versatile exposure of candidates."