Hiring in telecom seen coming to a standstill

Chennai: The Supreme Court verdict on the Adjusted Gross Revenue case can bring hiring in telecom sector to a standstill for the next one year, find experts.

The telecom sector has been going through tough times for the past three years and the SC judgement could lead to further worsening of situation on the hiring front. “Supreme court judgment on AGR case has far-reaching implications. The adverse SC judgment on the longstanding AGR case is a massive body blow for telecom service providers,’ finds Kotak Institutional Equities.

“A decade back telecom was one among the top-five sectors in terms of hiring. But the sector has not been in best of shape for the past five years. More specifically, hiring has been subdued in the sector for more than 36 months with telecom providers facing issues on multiple fronts,” said Rituparna  Chakraborty, EVP and co-founder of TeamLease Services.

The frontline jobs in sales and marketing has especially been under pressure. “We expect hiring to come to a standstill for the next one year” she added. “We would see only replacement hiring in critical functions,” she added.

Aditya Narayan Mishra, director and CEO of CIEL HR Services too finds the same. “We will see a decline of about 10 per cent in the overall employment figures of the sector in the next 12 months,’ he said.

However, as far as network operations are concerned India is still underpenetrated and hence this could be one area where some activity can be expected. Even here, minimal hiring could happen at the entry level.

However, experts do not expect any massive retrenchment due to the recent development. “The service providers have become quite lean in the past two years. So we do not expect fresh layoffs,” said Chakraborty.  

But the sector need not look forward for increments and salary hikes in the next one year. “We anticipate tough times for the sector in the next 12 months. Salary hikes for the senior levels aren’t likely to happen,” said Mishra.