The recruitment activity saw a drop of 2 per cent in March 2021 over the previous month, mainly dragged by a decline in job postings in sectors including banking/financial services, insurance, production and manufacturing, according to a report. The overall data indicate that there was a slight decline in job posting activity in March, according to Monster Employment Index, a job analysis report by Monster.com, a Quess Company.

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Industries such as banking/financial services, insurance (6 per cent), production and manufacturing (6 per cent), telcom/ISP (4 per cent), and media and entertainment (4 per cent), which previously showed a positive outlook, have witnessed a month-on-month decline in March 2021, owing to the pandemic, the report noted. "While the overall index witnessed a slight drop-in recruitment activity, major cities such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad show a positive outlook in hiring demand compared to last year. With companies re-adapting to the flexible-hybrid work model, and digital hiring on the rise with innovative tech, we anticipate a recovery of the Indian job market in the coming quarters," Monster.com CEO Sekhar Garisa said.

The Monster Employment Index is a broad and comprehensive analysis of online job posting activity on the Monster platform and real-time review of online career outlets during March 2021. Further, the report stated that most functions and departments have witnessed a slight decline in March, compared to the previous month. However, the software, hardware, telecom roles continue to recover with a 2 per cent month-on-month growth as of March 2021 compared to February 2021. Functions such as HR and admin, marketing and communications and finance and accounts witnessed a slight dip of 2 per cent, it added. Hospitality and travel (12 per cent), which showed moderate growth in the previous month, saw a significant decline in March. Sales and business development (12 per cent) showed a negative trend in recruitment activity across all markets in March, compared to a positive (5 per cent) in February. Software, hardware, telecom (12 per cent) and arts/creative (3 per cent) are back to pre-Covid levels as of March, the report indicated. However, it added that customer service (36 per cent), hospitality and travel (35 per cent) and healthcare (26 per cent) have seen the highest year-on-year decline in March compared to the same month in 2020.

Meanwhile, in terms of month-on-month growth, the report revealed that several industries such as logistics, courier/freight/transportation (19 per cent), printing and packaging (5 per cent) and office equipment/automation (5 per cent) saw a significant increase in job postings in March compared with February. Industries such as agro-based (12 per cent), logistics/courier (9 per cent), telecom/ISP (8 per cent), and IT-hardware, software (5 per cent) also witnessed an upward trend year-on-year in March compared to the same month of 2020. Cities such as Bengaluru and Pune have witnessed a positive month-on-month uptrend of 2 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively, in March 2021. The same cities have also observed a yearly uptrend, with recruitment activities in Bengaluru (14 per cent), Hyderabad (6 per cent) and Pune (2 per cent) growing in March, compared to the corresponding month in 2020, the report added.