Recruiting companies have emerged as the main channel to hire candidates across junior, mid and senior-levels in India, revealed a recent study.

While social media platforms and job sites were still relevant at hiring candidates, an increasing number of companies now prefer to go through employment agencies, according to CIEL HR Services study titled CIELWorks : Latest Trends in Indian Talent Market 2020.

In the contemporary scenario, the biggest challenge that India Inc. witnesses in talent acquisition is the availability of quality candidates.

Job markets remain robust with entry-level roles getting filled within a span of 30 days or less. The CIELWorks Study is an annual industry report that tracks the talent market trends across industry industries in the country.

As per the findings, India Inc saw a gradual change in the talent acquisition strategy and shifts in the talent sourcing mix in 2019. The overall push and pull factors that influenced employees to stick on to or change their jobs remained more or less the same. While 2018 witnessed talent acquisition becoming a board room topic, the trend strengthened in 2019 with more than 79 per cent of respondents claiming that senior management were concerned about the quality, speed, and cost of recruiting new pool of talent.

Also, over 70 per cent of employers took steps to deliver a positive favourable candidate experience with a realistic picture of the roles, expected career growth, and work environment. More than half of these recruiters focused on sustaining candidate interest till onboarding – a critical part of their acquisition strategy. The companies remain focused to attract millennials and revamped work environment and policies to make it attractive to the future workforce.

Additionally, it was observed talent acquisition channels saw a shift from social media hiring to India Inc preferring to go through recruiting companies for quality talent to fill junior to mid and senior-level job roles. Facebook remained a source of candidates for entry-level jobs, while Linkedin became a channel to recruit candidates from all levels.