Employers in India are bullish about their hiring outlook for the first half of this year, with 55 per cent of recruiters anticipating new jobs as well as replacement hiring to happen during the six-month period, a survey said on Tuesday.

The bi-annual survey, ‘Naukri Hiring Outlook January-June 2020’, that saw participation from over 2,400 recruiters across the country, projected an overall positive outlook.

Around 55 per cent recruiters anticipate new jobs as well as replacement hiring to happen in the first half of the year, while 26 per cent predict only new jobs and 13 per cent expect to do replacement hiring only, the survey noted.

Of those surveyed, 3 per cent indicated a scenario of “no hiring” at all, while only 1 per cent of the total recruiters anticipated lay-offs. “Analytics emerges as one of the functional areas where 14 per cent recruiters indicate hiring apart from popular roles in IT, Sales and Marketing and Operations,” Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer, Naukri.com said.

Most of the hiring will be under five years of experience, as 62 per cent of recruiters will be hiring in the band of 3-5 years, while 51 per cent in the 1-3 years band, the survey said.

Around 30 per cent of recruiters indicated that hiring will happen for the experience band of 8-12 years, while 18 per cent said they will be recruiting for experience levels of over 12 years.

On attrition, the survey said, 40 per cent of recruiters expect attrition to stay over 10 per cent, while 26 per cent recruiters indicate that it should stay under 5 per cent. Further, highest attrition is expected in the 1-3 years experience band at 46 per cent.

According to the Naukri Hiring Outlook 2020, 32 per cent of companies indicated an increment between 5-10 per cent, and 7 per cent recruiters suggested an increment of under 5 per cent, while 28 per cent companies will stick to an average increment of 15 to 30 per cent.

The survey further noted that 40 per cent of recruiters expect talent crunch to stay high. This is highest at the band of 3-5 years experience at 47 per cent followed by 39 per cent in the 1-3 years band and 32 per cent in the 5-8 years experience band.

Naukri Hiring Outlook is a bi-annual survey conducted amongst recruiters and recruitment consultants aimed at gauging hiring trends across companies and industries. More than 2,400 recruiters and consultants representing more than 15 major industries participated in this edition of the survey.