In Gujarat, they have confirmed facing the crunch, but see the slowdown as an era of 'change'.

Major job portals like naukri.com, monster.com and timesjobs.com have said that the financial sector in Gujarat is doomed with recession.

Jobs in banking and finance, insurance, Information Technology, human resources, retail and realty are facing the maximum crunch.

Jitendra Chauhan, Gujarat head of naukri.com said: “The crunch has now begun to show its impact since companies are blocking recruitment. Therefore, job portals will now have to make an extra effort. The condition is stable to some extent but we don’t know for how long it will remain so. We can see the downfall in some industries while some manufacturing industries have managed their stability.”

Experts have said that sectors like pharmaceuticals, agriculture, education, health, telecom, travel and even government, are surviving the odds and decently too.

Suresh, National Head of naukri.com said:“Although there is a lull in the market, some sectors have turned out as exceptions. We are getting good advertisements. We can see the government and health sectors as quite promising. Even education is attracting a lot of job offers these days.”

The retrenchment spree in companies has given impetus to job portals due to rising demands. Naukri.com has about 63,000 job advertisements, monster.com around 40,000 and timesjobs.com around 32,000.

The job portals have said that although web traffic has shot up, work flow has been affected.

“Although company advertisements come, the actual recruitment is much lower or almost not there. We are sending advertisements to customers too. But the actual recruitment is almost nil,” said an employee of timesjobs.com.

According to Kunal Sangnani, Gujarat head of monster.com, the job portals have had to rule out expansion plans and stop experimenting in job generation.

“This is an uncertain situation. The task has got tougher. The companies where retrenchment has taken place are now waiting for replacements. So, now we have a task to provide ‘suitable’ people for the vacant positions in the companies, which again demand very selective recruitments. Therefore, I think the opportunities are not dead as of now,” he said.

The job portals have said they do not see changes in the coming few months, but feel that the crunch has brought about a major transformation.

Suresh added:“There is an opportunity behind a problem. The companies where jobs have been frozen are hiring people for niche jobs. The demand for special skills has shot up, as surplus talent is not available.”

Suresh said job portals are seeing a positive development where companies are switching over from placement agencies to portals.

He added:“The surprising part is that government companies are looking forward to job portals. Many sectors like agro, pharma and the like have not been in job portals; but nowadays, even rare sectors have their presence on portals because of the job crunch in other sectors.”

Experts feel the time is most challenging for job portals where their primary work of generating jobs has suffered a setback.