New Delhi: Hiring trends in India is relatively strong than other markets around the world as nearly half of employers believe the recruitment volume this year is up from 2011, a survey says.

According to the LinkedIn Recruiting Trends survey with over 3,000 professionals/recruiters from the HR/Talent Acquisition department, of which 255 were from India, hiring in India remains healthy, despite global macroeconomic trends.

"Over 50 per cent say hiring volume is up from 2011; another 22 per cent say hiring are at same rate," the survey said adding that budgets appear to be trending in line with hiring volume growth.

Meanwhile, though India appears ahead of most other countries, there is still room to improve data-driven decision-making, the LinkedIn survey said as almost 40 per cent say they are average or poor at using data to make hiring decisions.

About 81 per cent of respondents agree to the fact that employer brand has a significant impact on ability to hire great talent. A whopping 90 per cent of respondents said they are either increasing or maintaining employer brand investment.

India is ahead of the curve when it comes to regularly measuring employer brand. Around 50 per cent of all India-based corporate recruiting leaders measure their employer brand as against the global average of 33 per cent.

Meanwhile, the two biggest obstacles to hiring top talent include competition and compensation. Respondents are worried that their competitors will invest in employer branding, improve referral programmes, and invest in new recruiting tools, the survey noted.

Around 45 per cent cite quality of hire as most critical metric. The survey findings noted that internet job boards and social platforms including online professional networks are rising as quality sources to attract talent.

Another leading trend in India is that most recruiters believe in the importance of passive (who are currently not actively seeking a new job) and in the pipeline talent (database of qualified, relevant candidates in anticipation of future hiring needs).

As per the survey, about 65 per cent of recruiters focus on passive talent and about 87 per cent of the recruiters are engaged in pipeline talent, the survey said.