After Pandemic, 71% of Employees Rethink Their Career Choices: Hiring Tracker Survey

The ongoing pandemic has had a huge impact, not just the job market but it has also become a catalyst for employees resetting their priorities, a survey by India Hiring Tracker has revealed. The survey says that about 71 per cent of workers surveyed are rethinking their careers and might explore a different career.

As many as 71 per cent of employees surveyed said, they are rethinking their careers and may even see “if a different career is worth pursuing”. While 51 per cent pondered if their current job is fulfilling a purpose, a larger proportion – 67 per cent questioned themselves of being in the right job. Another 61 per cent of employees also said that they are seriously thinking to reprioritise their job in favor of other life priorities,” revealed the survey.

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The India Hiring Tracker HY2 2021, a survey was conducted by Valuvox on behalf of Indeed was done among 1,219 employers and 1,511 employees. The survey has analysed employers and job seekers between July and December 2021, to understand the quantum of hiring and job-seeking activity, roles employers prioritized, expectations jobseekers held, and how all of this came together to facilitate a good match between the two sides.

The consequences of the re-evaluation have resulted in about three out of ten employees thinking of quitting their current jobs. Moreover, the thought has occurred to a greater proportion of male employees (31 per cent) than female employees (19 per cent), adds the survey.

The data suggests that COVID-19 has brought a paradigm shift in the priorities of the employees. For 68 per cent of surveyed employees, job satisfaction was solely ranked as ‘very’ or ‘most’ important aspect followed by salary and job satisfaction for 62 per cent. Work-life balance was a close third with 61 per cent of employees prioritising for the same.

The data further reveled that that 77 per cent of employees said that their workplaces do not offer flexibility, while only 7 per cent got the privilege of the flexibility of working fewer hours for reduced pay. Irrespective of hierarchies and education levels most employees around 49 per cent were found working five-day a week with 51 per cent of them clocking 6-8 hours a day.

WFH consequences

The survey added that Work from Home or remote work have blurred lines between personal and professional lives, as more than half of male employees, about 57 per cent worked for 6-8 hours a day during COVID as compared pre COVID where only 15 per cent of male employees worked for the same duration. While the percentage of female employees working for 6-8 hours has grown marginally to 43 per cent from 41 per cent pre-COVID.

Surprisingly, 40 per of employees said that they had no intention of working for fewer hours and at least 35 per cent of employees intend not to work for fewer hours in 2022.

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More Hiring

The survey added that overall hiring activity has seen an increase in the last leg of the year. The proportion of employers that hired during HY 2 (July – December 2021) jumped to 53 per cent from 44 per cent in HY 1 (January – June 2021), claimed the survey.

The data indicated that Information Technology was the front runner with 69 per cent of the employers from the sector hiring during HY-2, up from 63 per in HY-1, followed by E-commerce & Technology Start-ups (65 per, up from 60 per cent) and Telecommunications (47 per cent, up from 39 per cent).

Among the cities, Bangalore retained the top position in HY – 2 with 70 per cent of its employers’ hiring during the same period as compared to 66 per cent in HY-1. Mumbai followed for the second spot (63 per cent in HY-2, up from 58 per cent in HY-1) and Chennai managed the third spot with an impressive run (59 per cent, up from 41 per cent).

Hiring for Data Science and Analytics roles was up 31 per cent in HY – 2 from 10 per cent during HY – 1. The shift also meant big focus on business delivery – the Product / Project Engineer role had a spectacular rise from barely 3 per cent employers hiring during HY-1 to 19% hiring during HY-2.

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