Despite news of an upswing in the economic scenario, corporate India's hiring activity saw a decline in April, with the BPO and IT enabled services industry registering the sharpest drop of 22 per cent as compared to other verticals.

These figures are from a recent report by job portal Naukri.com. The portal’s JobSpeak index fell 4.7% to 677 in April compared to 711 in March. However the good news was that the drop was not that sharp as in the previous month.

But according to Info Edge COO Hitesh Oberoi, April/ May have traditionally been lean months for hiring as companies get busy with planning for the next fiscal.

Other sectors such as insurance saw a decline for the second consecutive month, with hiring witnessing a dip of 11 per cent, compared to March 2009, while BFSI saw an improvement in hiring activity by 4 per cent.