New Delhi, Mar 14 (IANS): Around nine in 10 recruiters in India are expecting either new or replacement hiring to happen over the next six months, as the white-collar job market is expected to witness optimistic hiring sentiments during the first half of this year, a report showed on Thursday.

Despite challenges in the IT sector, a majority of recruiters still anticipate that IT roles will dominate hiring activities (24 per cent), according to Naukri’s hiring outlook survey.

This is attributed to significant IT recruitment taking place in non-IT sectors. The IT sector is followed closely by business development roles (21 per cent) and supply chain roles (17 per cent).

In contrast, marketing roles were among the top three during the preceding six months, said the report.

“It is encouraging to see that 92 per cent of recruiters remain optimistic about new or/and replacement hiring in the first half of 2024. Coupled with anticipation around hiring trends returning to normalcy, the overall hiring outlook, while calibrated, seems to be stable and balanced,” said Dr Pawan Goyal, Chief Business Officer at Naukri.com.

Professionals with mid-level experience, ranging from 3 to 8 years, constitute approximately 53 per cent of the new hiring pool, with freshers and new professionals following closely at around 36 per cent.

However, 42 per cent of the recruiters informed that campus hiring initiatives have been put on hold in their organisations, indicative of more lateral hiring trends, the findings showed.