Jayarami Reddy, 35, a techie with 14 years of experience, was hired by an HR firm for an on-demand role as an IT consultant in July. On-demand – or as some call it, freelancing – roles are short-term, for a few days, weeks or months. Payment is on an hourly basis, and you are not tied to one company; you can take up multiple jobs.
Reddy says this is his first time in an on-demand role, which lasts six months. “I didn’t negotiate much, so my salary is just okay. But the job is flexible, it gives me time to pursue my interests, I get to live with my family in Khajipet (Andhra Pradesh). The daily expenses are much lower here,” he says. However, getting leave is a challenge and the job does not offer benefits like insurance, gratuity or PF. Despite this, Reddy does not intend to take up a permanent job in the near-term. “But next time, I will negotiate better terms of employment,” he says.
Raja Kumar Dakka, who has 12 years of experience, was also recently hired for an on-demand role for an IT company. He is based out of Kurnool in Andhra and expects there will be many on-demand roles in the future. Ram Prasad, who is based in Chennai and specialises in supply chain analytics, is working on two on-demand jobs. He says opportunities are high in areas of fullstack development, DevOps, data science and analytics. “My previous employer cut salaries during the lockdown, so I quit the job and got two on-demand roles. Only people with right technical competencies can benefit from such roles because companies pay on the basis of number of hours and productivity,” he says.
All three came across these on-demand opportunities on job portals or via HR consultancies. They have been hired for terms between six months and a year and the extension of their contract depends on companies' requirements.
Multiples trends are driving this increase in on-demand roles. Certain digital skills are in big demand, and there aren’t enough people with such skills to be hired on a full-time basis. That’s an opportunity for those with the requisite skills to offer themselves to multiple companies for specific projects. The remote working environment created by the Covid-19 pandemic has made it easier.
“Work-From-Home triggered by Covid-19 has taught the IT sector new ways of doing business,” says Ranga Pothula, SVP of global delivery services at enterprise software company Infor. Ajay Shah, managing founder of recruitment solutions firm Rekrut India, says on-demand is also a way to replace the bench model of IT services companies. “In the bench model, companies pay salaries even when the employee is not engaged in a project,” he says. Around 21,000 on demand jobs, he says, have been added in the IT services sector this year.
Siva Prasad Nanduri, business head for IT staffing in staffing solutions firm TeamLease Digital, says, at present, most customers are asking for 5-10% of their overall hiring to be on-demand. Such workers, he says, are assessed only on technical abilities. “Since their work is short-term, they are paid 10-15% more than regular staff,” he says.
Shah says job profiles expected to see higher on-demand hiring include those of data scientist, AI specialist, data analyst, cloud engineer and cyber security professional. Nanduri says demand is more for digitisation projects that involve SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, cloud). Sachin Gupta, CEO of HackerEarth, which provides a tech platform for hiring, says web development, mobile app development (requiring both frontend and backend skills), and data analytics are the most sought-after skills for on-demand roles.
Venkatesh Radhakrishnan, global head of talent acquisition at IT services firm UST Global, says UST is hiring for on-demand roles. Technologies like Java with Angular 7+ or microservices, Java full-stack with cloud, Angular 7+, AWS/Azure, SDET have seen a 20% increase in demand in the past three months.
On on-demand hiring portals, many such roles are available. On Wipro’s Topcoder platform, there’s full-stack developer, with expertise in Java microservices and Spring Boot, going for $750-1,150 a week, which is for five months. There’s also a data scientist role going for $2,750-3,150 a week, that is for four weeks.
While the on-demand trend is strong in countries such as the US, it’s still nascent in India, although the pandemic is accelerating it.
Sanjay Shetty, head of strategic account management at recruitment firm Randstad India, said that for this model to work, companies need to adjust their approach to tracking the output of gig workers.
“Besides, the government needs to come up with some sort of 'creative' or flexible approach towards providing gig workers social security with minimum documentation and keeping in mind the erratic attendance cycle that would be prevalent in the gig world,” he says.
Swati Rathor, TOI
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