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Hiring activities rose marginally with job listings rising to 2,436 in March compared to February this year, according to a report.

The increase of three percent in job listings on a month-on-month basis was mainly led by IT-software and retail sectors.

In February, the job listings stood at 2,356.

As per the latest Naukri JobSpeak Index, given the wave of digital transformation, the IT-software sector remains shielded and hiring continued to grow by 11 percent in March.

The retail sector, which was severely impacted by the pandemic, is also seeing robust revival, with sequential hiring activities seeing an uptick of 15 percent last month, as per the report.

The Naukri JobSpeak is a monthly index that calculates and records hiring activity based on the job listings on Naukri.com website.

Key sectors such as oil and gas (7 percent), accounting/ taxation/ finance (6 percent) and telecom/ ISP (5 percent) showed an uptick in hiring in March compared to February.

On the other hand, sectors such as BPO/ITES (1 percent) and BFSI (1 percent) witnessed a flat sequential trend.

With the second wave of COVID, education/ teaching (13 percent), FMCG (10 percent) and hotels/ airlines/ travel (8 percent) sectors experienced a decline in sequential hiring in March, the report said.

All six metros and key Tier 2 cities witnessed sequential growth in hiring in March, except Kolkata (3 percent) and Vadodara (2 percent) that saw a slight decline in hiring.

Ahmedabad registered the highest hiring growth of 13 percent amongst Tier 2 cities in March compared to February, the report noted.

Naukri.com Chief Business Officer Pawan Goyal said that overall hiring activity showed a robust growth of 23 percent in the January-March 2021 quarter compared to the October-December 2020 quarter.

According to him, the IT sector has been at the forefront of fueling this growth and it is encouraging to see sectors like retail and accounting/ finance also showing promising recovery over the past few months.

“With the economy opening up, recruiters are ready to hire again, and 83 percent confirmed this in our latest Naukri Hiring Outlook survey,” he added.

The demand for professionals in marketing/ advertising (10 percent) and HR/ administration (8 percent) roles also saw an uptick in March, while the demand in sales/BD (6 percent) roles saw a sequential decline.

Hiring for professionals with 4-7 years’ and 8-12 years’ experience saw the highest sequential growth of 6 percent in March this year. However, leadership hiring (those having over 16 years’ experience) declined by 3 percent last month compared to February.

On a year-on-year basis, there was a notable growth of 25 percent in hiring in March compared to the same month last year, led by sectors including IT-software, medical/ hospital and retail, the report said.

Job opportunities in the IT-software (42 percent), medical /hospital (33 percent) and retail (24 percent) sectors showed year-on-year growth. However, hospitality and travel sectors registered a decline of 11 percent in hiring in March compared to the year-ago period.