9x and 4x annual growth in professional conversations and interviews

25 million applications for Work-from-home jobs

Bengaluru: With an aim to bridge the gap between white and blue/grey collar workers, and make every job count, apna.co, India’s largest jobs & professional networking platform has unlocked another milestone by enabling more than 350 million interviews and professional conversations. Through these interviews and conversations, millions of professionals in the country not only connected with opportunities but also erased the divide between the professionals. Now, these professionals are doing what was earlier limited to the white-collar workers: become a part of the mainstream workforce through professional networking and have a defined career path.

The 22 million candidates in 50 plus cities have helped apna identify key trends of the rising workforce in the country.

The rising workforce who were earlier dependent upon their immediate connections to find jobs, have now switched to a digital mode to connect with opportunities around them. They have been spending more time than before scrolling through jobs, interviewing, building their professional identity and networking. Apna witnessed over 200 million professional conversations and 170 million interviews till date. apna’s data highlights 9x and 4x annual growth in professional conversations and interviews respectively.

In the last two years, a plethora of job opportunities were created across sectors and industries. Work from home model, higher unit pay and flexibility, emerged as a top choice for users while applying for jobs. Telecaller was the most interviewed job on apna by both men and women, highlighting a  huge demand for the role. In fact, apna enabled more than 26 million interviews for the role in the year gone by.  This was followed by delivery persons, back office, accounts & finance, data entry, marketing, retail, and office assistant. Work from home jobs emerged as a key trend with 25 million applications, 44% of these applications were from women.

According to apna, maximum interviews happened in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad from metro cities. In the tier II markets, Jaipur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Patna, and Ranchi witnessed the maximum number of interviews.

While a majority of users downloaded the app with the intention to find/switch-to a job of choice, most of them continued engaging in communities on the app. Networking came to the fore as an important professional activity for the users. Out of 22 million users on apna platform, 16 million are building networks either by posting in groups, commenting on the posts or 1-on-1 conversations. Professional networking has helped millions of users to achieve professional growth, upskill themselves, find opportunities and socialize with their peers. While professional networking was earlier limited to the white collar workers, the data shared by apna highlights the impact of professional networking among the rising workforce.

Users have been taking out time during the weekdays to focus on professional networking. Another data point added by apna highlights that users prefer Monday and Tuesday over weekends to engage in professional conversations.

apna’s job platform leverages a sophisticated algorithm that matches candidates with employers taking into account their skills, experience, and preferences. Government exams, business, learning languages, telecaller, back-office jobs, teacher, computer/data entry, beauticians, lab technician, and cooking were the communities with maximum engagement.

Talking about this newly unlocked milestone Nirmit Parikh, CEO and Founder, apna said, “Through these 350 million interviews and professional conversations, the rising workforce of India has managed to break the glass ceiling for themselves to join the mainstream workforce and apna is happy to become the enablers for them. We will continue supporting the rising workforce in India and across the globe”

apna is scaling at a rapid pace and has further expanded to 20+ cities in the last two months alone. The platform is now present in Agra, Ahmedabad, Ajmer, Aligarh, Amritsar, Asansol, Aurangabad, Belagavi, Bengaluru, Bhilai, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Bikaner, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Cuttack, Dehradun, Delhi-NCR, Goa, Guntur, Guwahati, Gwalior, Hubli, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jabalpur, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Jamshedpur, Jodhpur, Kannur, Kanpur, Kochi, Kolhapur, Kolkata, Kota, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Ludhiana, Madurai, Mallapuram, Mangalore, Meerut, Mumbai, Mysore, Nagpur, Nashik, Panipat, Patna, Prayagraj, Pune, Raipur, Rajkot, Ranchi, Salem, Solapur, Surat, Thiruvanthapuram, Trichy, Udaipur, Vadodara, Varanasi, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam