telecom industry jobs: Telecom Inc ups salary hikes amid talent war

The telecom industry, including top operators Reliance Jio, and , are giving salary hikes of an average 10-12% for this fiscal year, a significant increase compared with the average increment of 7.5% last year, said staffing firms.

For the three telcos, they said the average increments are 8-12%.

Most of the companies have communicated the pay hikes to employees. While some have already given out the higher salaries, others are expected to implement them effective July, the staffing firms said.

Deval Singh, business head of telecom, IT& ITeS, media and government at staffing services firm , said the carriers are aligned with each other when it comes to paying out salaries and aren’t overdoing it yet.

Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea did not respond to ET’s queries till press time on Thursday.

The telecom industry, which also includes infrastructure and equipment providers, virtual network operators and other segments, employs an estimated 4 million people, according to TeamLease.

There is a war out there for top talent, especially for those with expertise in new technologies. “This kind of talent comes with a higher ticket price and like any other industry, even the telecom industry is offering good perks to procure and manage this new-age highly skilled talent,” Singh said.

HR experts said while operators are looking to retain as much talent as possible to prepare for the rollout of 5G services, they are also making significant investments to upskill and reskill high-performing employees. Estimates put the increase in the HR budgets in telecom companies at 8-10%.

From a profile standpoint, the sales and tech profiles have driven the hikes this cycle. With Covid increasing the adoption of digitisation in the telecom sector, customer-facing jobs and those on the technical backend have gained prominence; the demand for the latter has also been boosted by the impending rollout of 5G technology. There is also high demand for talent in cloud computing, artificial intelligence analytics, IoT and mobile app development. “In-house talent is being retained by undertaking retention strategies, such as market corrections, higher increments, and one-time bonuses,” said Singh.