hiring: Hiring at top companies remains on track in 2024

At least half a dozen sectoral bigwigs are leading from the front in hiring in 2024. Top companies like L&T, Tata Steel, PepsiCo, Airtel, ITC, among others, told ET that their hiring plans are on track for the coming year mostly due to expansion of existing operations, bringing cheer to the otherwise muted job market. This is at a time when most players, especially the IT firms, are cutting down hiring numbers, especially at the entry level.

Hiring for this bunch will largely be focused on women to improve gender diversity; sustainability; and entry level talent from the campuses apart from lateral hiring. Overall, the hiring momentum for 2024 will likely be the same as 2023 and in some cases, even more. Hiring momentum will continue in 2024 because of the growth and expansion plans at Tata Steel to reach 40 million tonnes capacity by 2030, said Atrayee Sanyal, VP, human resource manager, Tata Steel.

“In view of the capacity expansion we will be hiring more in 2024 as compared to 2023,” Sanyal said. Numbers for Tata Steel in 2024 look like this – over 700 campus hires and over 1,000 lateral hires. In addition to blue-collar workforce hiring of over 1,000. Tata Steel is hiring for new roles in emerging technologies like data science and AI as well as for roles like agile transformation, R&D, finance roles related to mergers and acquisitions and sustainability. “At L&T, we have a strong order value book with projects across our core businesses and newer domain areas such as green energy and hydrogen,” C Jayakumar, executive vice-president and head CHRO, L&T, said. The major source of hiring for L&T is through engineering campuses across the country. “In 2023, we successfully recruited more than 2,700 candidates, and our projections for 2024 align with a similar figure,” said Jayakumar. The business outlook for the construction, infrastructure and energy sectors looks promising based on the major push by the government and the positive outlook of the market, said L&T’s Jayakumar.

“As part of ITC’s campus recruitment strategy, we recruit from top-tier campuses for our flagship management training programme,” said Amitav Mukherji, head of corporate human resources, ITC. Roles offered to campus hires by ITC include entry level manager positions in trade marketing and distribution, manufacturing and operations, supply chain and HR. “We have been recruiting about 90-100 from such top-tier campuses consistently and we don’t see that number changing significantly,” said Mukherji.