FMCG marketers gearing up for an all-out battle to woo commerce jobs

Temp staffing jobs are set to see the biggest boom since 2011 in the upcoming festive season, with ecommerce players, brick-and-mortar retailers, consumer durables and FMCG marketers gearing up for an all-out battle to woo consumers.

Amazon, Flipkart, LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Mondolez, Grofers, Urban Ladder and Pepperfry are among companies aggressively looking to grab people. Sales, logistics and customer support are the main areas where temp workers will be hired and overall demand is expected to jump by 30-50% in the period till end-December.


Staffing firms such as TeamLease, Quess Corp, Manpower and Randstad, who are inundated with requests for thousands of temporary workers, said ecommerce is the biggest growth driver this season.

They said the top 3-4 sectors including e-commerce, consumer durables & FMCG and retail alone could account for anywhere between 35,000-50,000 temp jobs this festive season.

According to various estimates, between 60,000-80,000 temporary jobs would be created in the organised sector alone this festive season, while the unorganised sector would hire more.

"This is definitely the biggest jump in the last few years," said Rituparna Chakraborty, cofounder and senior vice-president atstaffing firm TeamLease Services.

"Because of higher preparedness on part of sectors such as ecommerce, retail and consumer durables, factoring in the learnings of last year, we are anticipating an all-round aggressive approach. Just-in-time manpower shall play a critical role," she said.

With 4G rollout on the cards, telecom companies too are looking to hire temps for sales or last-mile installation.

According to staffing sources, a leading telecom operator has given out a mandate for some 1,600 people during the festive season, while a top smartphone maker plans to almost double its temp intake in sales for its new model launches.

Grofers plans to hire over 1,300 people in delivery, while Amazon will be hiring as many as 3,000 additional temps.

"Amazon continues to invest in expanding its business and be aggressive in our hiring outlook as we scale up our operations in India. With the upcoming festival season, our focus will be on meeting customer demand and we will do everything it takes," said Raj Raghavan, director HR at Amazon India. The company declined to comment on hiring numbers.

Other sectors, including BFSI, manufacturing, IT and BPO are also set to see a spurt in hiring numbers.

"A number of international fashion houses and supermarkets also outsource their call centre operations jobs to India during the festive season and temporary hiring is likely to pick up here too," said Kamal Karanth, managing director at Kelly Services and KellyOCG India.

Staffing companies on their part are busy pulling out all the stops to cope with the surge in demand.

Quess Corp has ramped up its recruitment team by 47% and is leveraging technology including mobile apps to recruit more people, said Guruprasad Srinivasan, the firm's CEO for people and services. "We also negotiate directly with the brands we work with to pass on discounts to the temp staffers," he said.

Discounts apart, companies are also offering higher salaries and bonuses in the festive season to rope in more talent.

"The average salary bracket for contractual staff ranges from Rs 9,000 to Rs 20,000 per month. However, during the festive season, companies are becoming more flexible in terms of remuneration based on a candidate's competencies. Apart from the monthly salary, employers are also providing performance linked bonuses," said Moorthy K Uppaluri, managing director and CEO at Randstad India.

Srikanth Rengarajan, executive director and president at ManpowerGroup India, said, "With increase in hiring, salaries are also likely to see a 15%-20% increased at all levels, with maximum impact at the bottom of the pyramid."

Pankaj Bansal, cofounder and CEO at PeopleStrong, said individual organisations, particularly those in the sunrise sector, could adopt innovative methods to incentivise workers.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-09-01/news/66107956_1_amazon-india-festive-season-durables

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