BENGALURU: April 2013 witnessed a growth in job and recruitment demand for professionals in the fields of marketing & advertising, entertainment/ media and sales/ business development, says a TimesJobs.com Recruitment Index.

The demand index recorded a 1 per cent growth in April over March, marking a positive beginning of the Q2 2013, highlights RecruiteX, TimesJobs.com Recruitment Index. On a year-on-year comparison, the demand index rose by 4 points in April 2013 (94 points) over April 2012 (91 points), registering an annual growth of 4.3 per cent.

"The Indian job market is still restrained. However, the positive beginning of Q2 hints towards signs of revival. We are hopeful of a sustainable growth trend across industries in coming months," said TimesJobs.com senior VP and business head Amit Jain.

In April, the IT/telecom industry exhibited the strongest demand, with a 12 per cent growth on month-over-month basis, among top 10 industries. Healthcare/ biotechnology/ pharmaceutical (5 per cent) and entertainment/ media (5 per cent) sector also performed well during the month, by registering single-digit growth in demand.

Whereas, high-demand sectors such as ITeS, consumer durables/ FMCG, projects/ infrastructure, construction/ cement, projects & infrastructure and BFSI recorded a dip in demand in April 2013 over March 2013.

Similar to industry-wise analysis, demand for talent was highest for IT/ telecom (17 per cent) professionals in April 2013. Demand for professionals in Marketing & Advertising, Entertainment/Media and Sales/ Business Development domain moved up by 10 per cent, 8 per cent and 6 per cent respectively during the month. Whereas, functional areas such as customer service/tele calling (0 per cent), front office/administration (-1 per cent) and accounting/finance (1 per cent) witnessed zero to negative movement in hiring activity in April 2013.

Among metros, Hyderabad (10 per cent) recorded the maximum rise in hiring activity during the month, followed by Pune (7 per cent) and Mumbai (2 per cent); in April 2013, top performing locations of March 2013 such as Bengaluru (-1 per cent) and Delhi NCR (-2 per cent) reported a dull to negative demand scenario. In state-wise analysis, rest of Gujarat (except Ahemdabad and Vadodra) (31 per cent) and rest of Maharashtra (except Mumbai and Pune) (19 per cent) region reported double-digit growth in hiring activity.

Job-seekers with 0-2 years of experience (5 per cent) and 2-5 years experience (1 per cent) were most in-demand in the experience category in April 2013; in experience-wise analysis, candidates with 5-10 years of experience (-4 per cent), 10-20 years of experience (-3 per cent) and over 20 years of experience (-10 per cent) reported a decline in demand index during the period.

Similar to the demand pattern, the supply index moved up from 200 points in March 2013 to 216 points in April 2013, indicating an increase in job-seeking activity post-appraisal season.

NEW DELHI: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma feels that the Indian media industry needs to introspect on the current models of self-regulation while emphasising that the government had no intention of placing any controls on the freedom of the press.

Giving a keynote address at the News Television Summit organised by Indiantelevision.com, Varma stressed that India was the only country in the world without a statutory regulatory authority.

While stressing that the government had no intention of imposing any statutory regulation on the media, Varma stated that media must do some introspection on its own ?sooner than later?.

Referring to digitisation, he said, the introduction of digital addressable systems (Das) was the largest single initiative taken by the country for the past few years.

Das will bring transparency and will necessarily force a paradigm shift with television channels working on newer revenue models, apart from working out on new content for the consumers, Varma said.

He also claimed that in the first phase of Das, both Delhi and Mumbai had gone digital de jure and de facto, while Kolkata had gone digital de jure. In Chennai, complete digitisation eluded the government because of a stay order from the Madras High Court.

He was confident that the TV channels along with the consumer will see the benefits of digitisation in the near future, but said state governments will also have to play a role in helping multi-system operators.

News television channels, he was confident, will become more sustainable and purposeful with digitisation as it will help in developing new revenue.

On the phase II of DAS, he said that 28 of the thirty-eight cities had already achieved over 50 per cent digitisation and four were fully digitised.

He said another major game-changer will be the auction of 839 FM radio channels in Phase III, cleared by the Empowered Group of Ministers recently.

Answering a question about permitting news on community and FM Radio, Varma said that the government is only restricting political news because it was difficult to monitor the large number of radio channels in the country.

However, the government had already decided to permit the FM channels to take all India radio news bulletins and this may be extended to community radio as well.

"We are just being prudent at present, but we are not ruling out permitting news bulletins in the future," he said.

He also said that India was working towards becoming a digital teleport hub and the government was taking steps to facilitate this transformation.

Indiantelevision.com Group CEO and Editor-in-Chief Anil Wanvari in his opening note lauded the decision to go digital but said the industry is struggling against various odds. He also said that ad regulation by Trai will only add to the woes of the television industry which has not been witnessing robust growth in the last few years.