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India’s IT industry has been the popular choice for tech talent since the past several years. However, the equation is changing fast.
The growth of the automobile industry fueled by a rapid thrust on digitization has sparked a huge demand for tech talent in the automobile domain. IT seems to be losing the tag of the biggest draw for tech talent, with automobile companies emerging as its top competitor in recruiting tech talent.
Here are some broad reasons for the surge in demand for tech talent in the auto industry:
Other than core subject knowledge, the following are the top sought-after tech skills in the automobile industry:
Although auto companies still prefer to hire most candidates from tier-1 cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune, non-tier 1 cities are slowly gaining more prominence. Companies have been successful in attracting the right talent by reaching out to prospective candidates in tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Coimbatore, Ahmedabad and Kochi which earlier remained largely untapped. Automobile companies are set to hire 45% of their workforce from other than tier-1 cities, as compared to 35% last year according to Taggd’s Automobile Sectoral Report 2022
In metros, Bangalore and Delhi saw the most hiring demand (15%) in the auto sector at the onset of 2022. Other tier-1 cities with high hiring demand for the auto industry were Pune (12%), Chennai (10%), and Hyderabad (8%).
Although there has been a shift in tech talent to the automobile industry, one of the significant challenges the industry faces is the limited availability of the right talent. As the industry has evolved and adopted digital technologies, including robotics and IoT, several new tech roles have emerged. Acquiring suitable candidates for these unexplored roles becomes a task for recruiters due to the ongoing talent crunch.
Another crucial roadblock in talent acquisition is the low compensation rates. The automobile industry is inherently known to pay less than its counterparts like the IT and telco industries, and this often leads to a longer time required to fill vacancies.
As the auto industry shifts to electric vehicles and digital services, auto cos too need to explore talent from emerging and existing IT hubs. The IT sector is all set for expansion by investing in small cities, thus, decongesting developed cities and providing opportunities to freshers in small cities. Ahmedabad and Kolkata are listed amongst the top five emerging IT hubs across the world.
Research by Taggd suggests that while Ahmedabad has a whooping talent supply of 86,990, Kolkata stands at 64,480.
Read more: Indian IT Hubs: Expecting Big Things From These New ‘Talent Islands’
As the Indian automobile market is constantly growing at a steady rate, there is an increasing demand for tech talent in the automobile industry. While the past decade noticed a spike in demand for tech talent in the IT domain, recent times are witnessing a shift in this demand to the automobile sector.
With a push toward expanding the EV segment and numerous government initiatives targeted at the automobile sector, the auto industry is packed with job opportunities for tech talent.
You can read more about the job trends in the automobile domain in our report Decoding Job Market in India 2023.
