Sri Lanka ranked 12th in the world by IBM for BPO
View(s):everjobs.lk, the fastest growing online career portal in Sri Lanka, has in a new report said that jobs in the Information Technology (IT) sector led the demand for jobs in Sri Lanka in 2016.
The report says IT has been at the ‘top of the pops’ in the hiring industry and one of the most searched for words of the year by online job seekers. This is according to data gathered by monitoring more than 37,000 job opportunities, 200,000 job applications and 290,000 job searches on everjobs.lk.
The portal has published a yearly analysis of the national job market with some very revealing insights. Put together in a simple-to-read infographic, everjobs.lk’s new release identifies key trends within the job seekers’ sphere in Sri Lanka and reveals the top industries hiring in 2016.
“It comes with no surprise that three of the five most searched for professions by online job seekers lie within the IT industry. Data Entry, general IT and Graphic Designer roles are most sought- after, which is equally represented in the most vacancies by job category – in IT and software,” the portal said in a media release.
This trend was explained by Rushabh Sheth, Managing Director for everjobs Sri Lanka, as follows: “Sri Lanka is ranked 12th in the world by IBM for business process outsourcing and is home to BPO units of companies such as Google, J.P. Morgan or Microsoft. Needless to say, IT and system engineers are some of the most in-demand talent in the job market and we see this trend continuing in the future.” The only ones beating IT jobs in popularity are positions in the HR space.
Colombo remains the undisputed employment powerhouse in Sri Lanka, providing nearly 60 per cent of all vacancies on everjobs.lk during the past year. The increasing number of jobs in other, more touristic, cities like Kandy and Negombo can be explained by the 14 per cent rise in tourist arrivals in 2016 compared to 2015. While Sri Lanka’s travel and tourism industry employed around 800,000 directly in 2015, the World Travel and Tourism Council expects this number to rise to 943,000 by 2025.
“Put in a nutshell, the Sri Lankan job market has experienced a further rise in the IT industry as its major employer in 2016, as well as Colombo’s undisputed dominance as a supplier of vacancies,” the release added.