Talent freeze: CXOs get picked, mid-level left waiting

Mint

21-06-2025

From boardrooms to back offices, India Inc. is hitting the brakes on hiring. This time, it's not just about IT—mid-level managers are feeling the freeze, while top roles remain the only sure bet.
The crisis in the Middle East, poor visibility and business realignment as companies measure the impact of artificial intelligence have caused hesitancy in the job market. Slower hiring in India's private sector mirrors the overall increase in unemployment, driven by fewer rural jobs.
'There is a degrowth in many sectors in terms of headcount addition. When compared quarter on quarter, most of the sectors have shown an 18-20% dip in hiring mandates," said Guruprasad Srinivasan, group chief executive officer (CEO) of staffing firm Quess Corp. 'The sectors are showing a kind of withdrawal symptom from hiring.
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The year-on-year numbers do not look encouraging either. Quess has about 1,300 open mandates in the IT and Global Capability Center (GCC) sector, about 18% down from the April-June period of last year. Banking and financial services (BFSI) mandates have fallen by at least 20%, while auto and engineering by 13% in the first quarter of the fiscal year, when compared on a like-for-like basis. Srinivasan pointed out that the consumer and retail sector remains flat, while the only sector showing some growth is manufacturing and construction.
The drop in hiring mandates at contract staffing firms reflects the increase in the unemployment rate to 5.6% in May from 5.1% in April. It was the domino effect of a shift in rural employment away from agriculture, according to data released Monday by the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI). According to the MoSPI, the contraction in agricultural activity affected both men and women in rural areas.
Changing tack
Quess' rival TeamLease Services has also cautioned about a damp hiring environment.
'There is a relative slowdown in private sector hiring. Of the 600 million people participating in India's labour force, 80 million are employed in the formal sector. When further distilled, 6 million of the 80 million fall into the third-party contract staffing space," said Balasubramanian A., senior vice-president and business head at TeamLease Services. 'There may not be large-scale layoffs, but a measured approach in hiring."
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According to the Teamlease Employment Outlook report, 47% of employers anticipate workforce expansion, 25% expect reductions, and 28% foresee no change, resulting in net employment change (NEC) of +2.8% in the April-September months of this fiscal. The NEC for the earlier six months (October 2024-March 2025) was +7.1%, signalling a 'deliberate pivot toward demand-sensitive and cost-conscious hiring".
The hiring industry includes staffing firms that provide a third-party workforce, where the employee works for a firm but is on the payroll of the hiring vendor. Then, there are recruitment companies that place junior and middle-management executives in companies. Search firms look at hiring top-level executives.
Mint detailed in May how large tech-enabled businesses such as Zomato, Cars24, and Gupshup, among others, have laid off employees over the past quarter. Many others, such as Swiggy and Flipkart, have pruned divisions and reassigned staff to other roles. Globally, too, big tech firms like Microsoft are pruning their workforce.
Mid-level executives
Job opportunities for the middle-order executives were scarce in the April-June period. 'There is a 15% dip in the hiring mandates of executives who have four to eight years of experience in the consumer, pharmaceutical, hospitality and financial services," noted Anshuman Das, chief executive and co-founder of Careernet, a talent solutions provider.
But a year-on-year comparison may be unjustified, as Das pointed out. 'When one compares on a like-to-like basis, the drop in hiring mandates will widen because there were no tariff-related challenges and the global uncertainty was still limited to the Russia-Ukraine war."
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Leadership hiring is turning out to be a mixed bag and some businesses are urgently looking for CXOs. In fact, Mint wrote this week that even in the case of open positions, job seekers are hesitant about joining a new firm as they are afraid of sudden changes in the firm's need for a new person as the geopolitical climate and global economy play truant. The last man in will be the first one out—a fear that has gripped many.
'It is client specific and we are seeing good traction in industrial manufacturing, pharmaceutical, automotive and auto ancillary and Indian firms who want to set up base in Africa and Latin America," said K. Sudarshan, managing director for the search firm EMA Partners India Ltd. He pointed out that the FMCG hiring, on the other hand, is 'tepid".