India decoupled from global recession, best of employment yet to come: Quess Corp founder

India is reasonably decoupled from the recessionary possibility of the rest of the world and current hiring trends indicate that the country is likely to witness a strong employment growth rate in a few years, according to business services provider Quess Corp’s founder and non-executive chairman Ajit Isaac.

“India is reasonably decoupled from the rest of the world in terms of recessionary possibility. We will continue to see growth in India, maybe not at 8%, but we will see growth….We saw a great period of growth in employment between 2000 and 2007. The GDP went up from $470 billion in 2000 to $1.2 trillion in 2007. We’ll be able to come back to seeing that rate of growth in a few years if current trends are an indication to go by,” said Isaac at the event in Bengaluru on Wednesday to announce the rebranding of job discovery portal Monster India, SE Asia and Middle East into talent platform ‘Foundit’ to offer a range of services for job seekers and hiring managers.  

Quess Corp acquired Monster Worldwide's APAC & ME businesses in 2018 as a strategic investment to strengthen its HR services portfolio, and has been operating in India, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Isaac said the tech sector and internet economy, which are witnessing mass layoffs, are likely to experience pain for another two quarters, but he allayed concerns saying that the IT industry employs 5 million people directly and another 5 million indirectly. “So, the amount of noise you hear about changes in the IT industry is disproportionately higher than the employment itself that’s there in the IT industry. We should look at the economic scenario rather than IT alone.”

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He elaborated that BFSI and manufacturing saw the largest employment growth in a segment going by Quess’s own database. “The core sectors are hiring more and more, which is a great sign for India.” However, tech itself will influence employment in India by way of greater connectivity, digitisation and 5G services which will enable a greater volume of the workforce, especially women, to work from home and boost the economy," he added.  

Isaac also spoke about the much-debated issue of moonlighting saying that the employers are winning the issue but only in a limited way, but only till rules and frameworks emerge. “The desire of people to do more, work more and earn more cannot be suppressed. So, companies have to find a way to absorb this without finding that their own IP is being compromised or there is a breach of security. Moonlighting is not going to go away but the systems will become better and sharper in managing it.”  

Monster, which serves more than 70 million job seekers and 10,000 customers across 18 countries, said it is rebranding itself into talent management platform Foundit, especially after the pandemic has changed the talent and hiring process. The company plans to use artificial intelligence (AI), data and analytics to personalize offerings such as mock interviews, learning resources and more mock interviews, prep materials and more.

“The platform of the future needs to cater to a highly dynamic job market, skill-based hiring and changing expectations from careers. We are excited to unveil a new direction for Monster from simply facilitating job and candidate discovery to enabling significantly better talent management outcomes,” said Sekhar Garissa, chief executive officer of Foundit, formerly Monster.