With companies offering competitive salaries and generous perks along with great flexibilities, employees are increasingly exploring flexible career opportunities that allow time for growth in personal capabilities. Hence, more and more job seekers in India and other parts of the world are looking for “flexible career” opportunities and getting inclined towards ‘work from home' option, says a report.

An annual study undertaken by ‘Indeed‘ globally noted that Indian job seekers put flexibility at a premium with searches for ‘work from home' increasing 111 per cent in 2017. Among others, digital marketing, government and technology-related jobs also saw significant rise in 2017. Global technology disruptions coupled with the Indian government's aggressive focus on digital has seen its impact on the local labour market.

“With more companies in India wanting to increase their digital presence, there is a visible surge in job searches for digital marketing jobs with core technology opportunities in the domains of Machine learning, Data scientist and Data analytics being the hot favourites,” the report said.

The report further noted that, while pharma sector saw a 40 per cent dip in search volumes in 2017 compared to 2016, job search for Ayurveda saw a growth rate of 56 per cent in 2017. Moreover, government job searches witnessed a boost despite a surge in tech opportunities. “While globally tech jobs are the most sought after, in India job seekers are inclining towards public sector jobs,” it noted.

“While flexibility remains a priority for most job aspirants globally and in India, the inclination of the Indian workforce towards Ayurveda and public sector jobs signify the impact of socio-economic developments on the job market and people's preferences,” said Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed India.

Indeed's data science team analysed hundreds of thousands of search terms in ten countries to identify which of them dramatically increased their share of search traffic in the year.