He said: “Since the pre-placement offers as well as the lateral offers for candidates with prior work experience have seen a decline, we are expecting a similar trend. The total dominance of firms providing financial services will vanish and we will witness a shift to marketing functions in specific and operational positions in general.”

He said another trend being observed is that compensation packages have not necessarily dropped across the sectors, but the number of recruitments has reduced to half or even less then half, as compared to the rosy times.

Neeraj Arora, Corporate Relation In-charge, Institute of Management, Nirma University, said, “Earlier, the recruitments were based on speculations and projections, but now the companies are going in for more realistic requirements and thus reducing the numbers.”

Experts in the engineering sector in Gujarat shared similar observations.

Prof K B Bhoyania, Training and Placement Officer, L D College of Engineering, said: “Earlier the job market was dominated by the IT, software and the electronics sector, which was essentially export-oriented. But after the crisis kicked in, the core sector jobs in the fields of mechanical, electrical and civil engineering are much in demand. Even the new field of environment engineering is witnessing an upturn.”

Even placements in the legal profession have been hit, but experts feel it is mostly due to apprehensions rather than anything else.

Rishikesh Dave, Registrar, Gujarat National Law University, said: “The

legal profession is largely immune to the meltdown effect as our major recruiters include the government as well as the judiciary, in addition to various private players.”