Chennai stands first in job opportunities

3.38 p.c. growth rate for city companies forecast by consultancy firm

CHENNAI: When Vishal Singh, 32, moved to Chennai from Gurgaon a year and half ago he was apprehensive. "I’d heard Chennai was a very conservative place, but then in software you just go where the job takes you," he says.

He was pleasantly surprised to find a clean city, populated with friendly people with a high degree of professionalism when he moved over.

He isn’t alone. Chennai is growing rapidly and drawing more people from other parts of the country.

A recent quarterly survey by the human resource consultancy firm, Ma Foi Consultants, says Chennai is all set to lead metro cities in terms of the rate of growth of employment opportunities for the second quarter (April-June) this year.

Chennai’s companies are growing faster than companies anywhere else in the country and likely to notch an average of 3.38 per cent growth on the Ma Foi Employment Index (MEI). This is against the national figure of 1.28 per cent in this period.

Forecast

The survey covered 2,000 companies across 17 sectors including 284 companies in Tamil Nadu.

While companies in Telecom, IT and ITES sectors seem to be growing most rapidly at the national level, the manufacturing sector leads in Chennai, followed by IT, Textiles, Retail and ITES. Tamil Nadu is growing faster than any other State in terms of employment; Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Haryana follow. In Chennai, small private limited companies with less than 100 employees are forecasted to demonstrate the highest growth rate of 9.1 per cent on the Ma Foi Employment Index.

Recruiters admit that it is hard to determine whether the growth in jobs available is drawing more people from outside Chennai. But with job postings on the Internet, geography is certainly no longer a barrier when it comes to hiring or getting hired, according to Vignesh Vellore, a human resources executive with an offshore software development company here. "We post jobs on line and get responses from all over the country," he says. More than half the employees working at the company come from outside Tamil Nadu.

While Chennai can match big cities in terms of opportunities, says HR consultant Sathya Krishnan, people hesitate to move here for two reasons: lifestyle and climate.

"But it is changing, and when the job offers are really attractive, people do move and a more cosmopolitan environment is healthy for the organisation." Besides, at many large corporations, the management style is more or less standardised at every location, she says.