Lack of Skills Kills Your Career

Most of the youth who are qualified and getting themselves qualified want to join the
bandwagon of IT industry. Everybody wants to join a software company, irrespective of
their knowledge, skills, abilities and attitude.

Lack of self-awareness, lack of knowledge with regard to job-market, finding out short cuts to success, marks oriented education, neglecting soft skills, focusing on Spoken English as the only success factor or ladder to success, looking to make fast buck - all these vices in our employable youth are diverting their attention from any kind of positive goals to achieve success. By focusing on money making, most of the youth are learning technical skills in demand in the IT industry, and not the skills they like or the way they want to mould their like to attract success. The one and only motivation is 'money' for today youth and the penultimate success parameter to measure individual success in the Society. This kind of perception has killed the 'achievement motivation' in youth and they have become deaf to any kind of counseling except 'EAMCET' counseling. This is the reason, why we are lacking good software engineers, good scientists, good academicians, good lecturers, good faculty who are used to dawn the role of coach, mentor in good olden days to guide the students with their ideas and ideals. We lack teachers with conviction and motivation as they too caught in the web of Society's perception of success i.e. 'who makes more money is always a success'! The youth have become 'misguided missiles' without having any goal to achieve success in their life. EAMCETS, CETS, CATS, ICATS, GATES, GREs have become the mantras for success, and not the knowledge or good foundation in the subjects of their interest.

Then what is the solution for this menace, which is diverting our youth from the ideals and lofty goals, which spell success with a bonus of continuous motivation? The answer is 'Skills' not by heartless by hearting of all subjects only to get marks. Then, the question is why only focus on Skills?

Today about 8.2 crore workforce in India is unemployable. Public Private Partnership
(PPP) in education can be one of the key remedies in slicing down the rate of
unemployability of the Indian youth, feel HR consultants and industry insiders. About 57% of India's youth suffer from some degree of unemployability, while 53% of the employed youth lack specific skill sets and only 8% of youth are unemployed, according to a pan-India labour report released by Teamlease, the largest staffing company.

Commenting on the findings of the report, Shiv Agarwal, CEO, ABC Consultants, said that PPP could bring in more industry-specific curriculum in the education sector.

"A PPP based on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, wherein corporates are given complete control of an educational body to develop and then transfer it back to the government can play a huge role in building talent to suit the industry's requirements."

With the booming job market currently standing at 455.7 million jobs, about 82.5 million youth in the age bracket of 15-30 years are unemployable.

"By unemployable, we refer to individuals who have to be trained by the industry in basic skills which they should have acquired through college and university education," Manish Sabharwal, Chairman, TeamLease Services opined.

This demand-supply mismatch is accelerated by outdated curriculum coupled with a dearth of vocational and technical training, thereby contributing to an increase in the number people with almost no industry exposure.

Vocational training, when provided, imparts training in specific fields through practical experience, while technical is defined in terms of acquiring a degree or diploma in agriculture, engineering, technology, and medicine.

"Our institutions are misaligned with demand. We need a modular framework of courses covering a mix of knowledge, skill and work-attitude modules that fit people to high volume vocations and incentivise 'edupreneurs,'" avers Visty Banaji, Executive Director, Godrej Industries.

While problems of unemployment are not new, the rise in number of people who are unable to meet the industry's needs due to the failure of institutions to impart career-oriented knowledge and skills-set is a pressing problem, as it can hamper India's double digit growth.

To address this shortfall of employable people, state governments are waking up to the occasion by taking help from consultancy services and firms.

"Qualified people are the third most important factor after infrastructure and business environment to draw in investment, and hence states are looking for ways to build quality people.
Several companies have introduced strategies entwined with the college syllabus to equip students with the latest demands of the industry and thereby customise education accordingly.
Information Technology major Infosys has the campus Connect initiative with engineering institutions in Mysore, Bangalore, Pune and other cities, through which workshops and seminars are held for students to provide them with industry-specific exposure.

Likewise, ICICI Bank is working in upgrading curriculum in areas like wealth management and credit relationship sales with institutes like MDI, NMIMS, ICFAI and so on.

Employable youth has to take advantage of these initiatives by industry experts and focus on skills to make themselves employable by enhancing their Knowledge, Skills, abilities and attitude to build a great career of their choice.

Ocean of Opportunities are available and employable youth is in dark with no skills and
could not market themselves in the job-market. Which stream is in demand right now for MBAs? Naturally HR is in much demand and management graduates who are not opting for HR may lose many opportunities.

There are only 3,500 new HR personnel to recruit 8 crore people in the next 5 years.
Amazing! Due to this reason, industry will face a shortfall of 1 lakh HR professionals A
huge deficit of talented human resource professionals is staring India Inc in the eye. With
the economy going strong, according to industry estimates, at least 80 million new jobs
are likely to be generated over the next five years.

Assuming a very conservative figure of one HR person for every 500 employees, though typically the ideal figure should be 1:200, there would be a shortfall of more than 1-lakh HR professionals in the coming five years, considering that only 500-700 students pass out with specialised HR degrees each year.

"There is a huge mismatch between the demand and supply sides. Few institutes have been able to offer specialised HR courses that are in tune with the industry's needs," says Shiv Agarwal, CEO, ABC consultants.

With retention and attrition of employees being the chief headaches of company bosses, the question arises as to how we can address the problem of a shortage of those whose work it is to recruit and retain the human capital at companies.

At present, there are approximately 1,132 management institutions in the country (of which 161 are in Maharashtra), that are approved by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), as of October 2006.

(Figures for 2007 are still being compiled). Of these, hardly seven to eight institutions like Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Management Development Institute (MDI), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) offer specialised programmes in HR and Labour relations.

Though the IIMs and other business schools like Indian School of Business (ISB), SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) have specialisation in HR, there are only a handful of takers, as most students opt for either Finance or Marketing.

Also, many students who complete their Masters in HR join human resource consulting services rather than the industry.

"HR was traditionally seen as a back office function though times have changed. Although we get ten times the number of applicants for our 60-65 seats in personnel management & industrial relations (PM&IR), the figure is still small when compared to those who go in for marketing or finance. This can be because many believe that HR is not as lucrative, both in terms of payment and job profile when weighed against the other two, which is not true," states XLRI's Prof. Madhukar Shukla.

Turning towards the industry, there is acute attrition and poaching in the HR departments. When a good HR professional leaves, it becomes difficult to immediately hire another efficient person; hence companies normally take in someone from another department, say sales or operations.
Even though a person from another department can bring in additional experience and exposure, which can work in the benefit of the business, there is still the vacuum that can be filled in a better manner by a traditional HR professional.

"There are hardly any retention plans to check HR attritions. Some companies have gone HR focused and give HR the pilot's seat, but the majority lack structured career paths and compensation equivalent with other business functions.

It is an irony that HR people speak for others but there are only few spokespersons for HR," says Ratna Sinha, HR Head, Emami Ltd.

Nonetheless, certain colleges are taking measures to attend to this problem. XLRI has devised a certification course in human resource, which is completely handled by the institute faculty for companies like Accenture, Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra & Mahindra and targets those employees who show an inclination towards HR.

Companies like Hindustan Unilever Ltd, PepsiCo India, Coca-Cola India have started outsourcing certain HR functions like payroll processing, recruitment processing, training, etc. to consulting firms, as they believe that outsourcing can provide access to new skills and fresh insights and divert the HR managers' attention towards strategising.

But both these measures, namely outsourcing and certification courses can answer only short-term problems. Industry needs to start taking this problem of HR deficit seriously and find a long lasting solution.

Having understood the implications of these consequences, as a HR Professional, I advocate always HR stream and excellent soft skills to become a successful professional. HR professionals are always in demand wherever there are two people. Without HR professionals, Companies cannot manage themselves to meet business goals. HR will be always in demand till the end of Kalyug.

Learn the skills, which will make you successful in your professional as well as personal life. Make your education skills oriented rather marks oriented and routine 'CETS' oriented. This will give you much-expected boost to your career in not just IT industry, but in any industry of your choice.

The author is a HR Professional and at present he is working as HR Manager, with MedPlexus India Pvt Ltd., a software company based at Hyderabad (http://www.medplexus.com) with HQrs in USA.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Challa_S.S.J._Ram_Phani

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Useful Tips for a Promising Career in the Indian IT Industry

India with the dawn of the millennium is facing an IT explosion where the IT industry is growing leaps & bounds and expanding multi-dimensionally. Presently India has more than 3000 IT service providers and the sector is projected to grow at a rate of 35% in the year 2007. In the year 2006, the 12 largest Indian IT companies generated a revenue of 11 billion USD. This growth is not only peculiar to metros but has trickled down to tier II & tier III cities as well. Today one can witness a boom in cities like Pune, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Mysore, kochi, Vishakhapatnam and Ahmedabad.

This growth has also spawn the need for hiring more and more IT resources to sustain and drive the growth rate further. Hence, a need to hire skilled professionals has emerged among all streams of the IT sector such as: IT education & training, Computer programming, Software development, Software Engineering, Database Administrator, Network Systems & Data Communication Analysts, Technical writing, Content Development, Technical support, Hardware Design, System Administration, Web development, Quality Assurance, Call center support, Internet/Intranet development, E-commerce, Help desk/end user support.

The present situation is very meaty for any IT professional, as there are openings generating for all be it a fresher, project manager or team leader, hence, giving a job seeker several career options. But at the same time with so many IT courses available and lakhs of IT graduates entering the job market every year, competition is also getting fierce. So, for you to beat the competition and stay ahead of the crowd here are some tips from the team of Naukri.com, India’s number 1 job site.

1. Understand your skill set -

Analyze what combination of skills and qualifications you have and then make a list of companies that would want to hire resources having a skill set similar to yours. This way you are streamlining your job hunt instead of blindly applying to all IT companies which could be completely different from your profile.

2. What benefit do you offer? -

A company is more interested to know the benefits it can reap from a candidate’s skills. The skills mentioned in your resume should sound beneficial to the recruiter efficiency & productivity wise.

3. Put keywords in your resume -

These days recruiters search for resumes mostly on job sites. So your resume should include terms or keywords that a recruiter would use while searching for an IT candidate. For example, JAVA, LAMP, C++, MIS, SQL, MCA, B tech. and so on. This will make your resume searchable i.e., whenever a recruiter searches for these keywords, your resume gets displayed in the search results.

4. Top it with a summary -

Recruiters often avoid lengthy resumes and they tend to overlook important skills when they have to scan a huge pile of resumes. So, to avoid this, begin your resume with a summary of skills, where you can just mention briefly about your skill set, years of experience and number of projects you have worked on. This will hold the recruiter’s interest and provoke him to read your resume further. For example: your summary could be ‘MCA with 4 years of experience in QA & Testing’

5. Proofreading is a must -

Check your resume thoroughly for incorrect terminologies and grammatical errors. No matter how qualified you are or how much experience you have, a small mistake in your resume can hinder you from getting a call from a company of high standards. So, proofread your resume and rectify all errors before sending it out. For example: Some people may write ‘data warehousing’ as ‘dataware housing’ or even ‘data warehousing’… these kind of mistakes can’t be ignored, specially in the IT field. You can also seek help of your friends and seniors while proofreading your resume.

6. Stick to what you are actually good at -

Mentioning skills in your resume which you are not well versed with may land you up in a trouble. If the interviewer asks you questions regarding these skills, then you may not be able to justify them with an answer.

7. Your innovations -

During the interview quantify situations where you have helped your team save both in terms of time and finances by implementing some changes or a new work procedure. By talking about these incidents in an interview you will be promoting yourself as it is immensely important to market yourself during an interview.

8. Your accomplishments -

Describe your Key Responsibility Area, the projects you have handled for the organization or during your course (mention course projects only if you are fresher), challenges faced by you and what steps did you take to overcome those challenges. But be crisp and don’t go on and on.

9. It’s okay if you don’t know something -

If the employer asks you something you are not aware of then simply admit it, instead of pretending to know it. It’s not possible for any developer or programmer to know everything and the recruiter would surely understand if you are not trained in a particular skill.

10. Do your homework -

Lastly, know the organization you are applying to or appearing for an interview. You must know about the industry they are into and try finding out the software and programming languages used by them. So, the interviewer will be impressed seeing your interest in the company and would consider you as a sincere candidate.

Getting a job these days is not a big deal, but what kind of a job you are securing is what matters the most. We wish that these tips help you land in the right job with a promising and a successful career.

Madhurima Sil

Asst. Mgr. Marketing

Naukri.com

About Naukri.com

Naukri.com, India’s No. 1 job site and the flagship brand of Info Edge revolutionized the concept of recruitment in India. Since its inception in 1997, Naukri.com has seen exponential growth year after year. Formerly an ICICI Ventures investee company, it has attracted investments from leading venture capitalists, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures, apart from an IPO in November 2006.

Naukri.com is a recruitment platform and provides services to the corporate world, placement agencies and job seekers in India and overseas. It offers a bouquet of products like Resume Database Access, and Response Management Tools and its services include Job Postings, and Branding solutions on the site. With 80000 job listings and 10 million searchable resumes, Naukri.com serviced over 27000 corporate clients in the past year.

The company has over 1000 people operating through 57 offices in 32 cities in India and overseas offices in Dubai. For more information, log on to http://www.naukri.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Madhurima_Sil

Can the Indian Job Market Do Well in the Products Industry Along With the Services Sector?

Software industry can be broadly classified under two sectors - Service Industry and Products Industry. The Service Industry is the one which requires extensively maintenance and enhancements to existing systems. For example top banks of US outsource extensively to the Indian IT giants namely Infosys, Wipro, TCS and HCL.

The sudden increase in the number of software jobs was due following reasons: 1) Government opening the doors for MNC's to invest more easily than earlier times 2) Abundance of skilled labor who could literally work for a compensation that is ten times lower than that in US

As more and more US companies started outsourcing to India, this created plenty of jobs for lots of young engineers across the country. Before 90s unemployment and underemployment were so prominent that there were so many movies made over young talented heroes deprived of a living. But the sudden increase in software jobs turned this trend upside down.

Software boom not only created jobs but also created awareness among Indians to computerize / modernize legacy systems in government sectors. For example, Income Tax returns filing has been completely automated nowadays. Also Indian government has now (2009) started a major project for issuing Unique Identification Numbers to Indians (This can be thought of similar to Social Security Number in US). Hence increasing awareness has led to increasing demands in domestic market especially in government sector, which in turn is creating a plenty of jobs.

There is a widespread thought that Indian jobs which are mostly under service sectors may not promise a bright future for the country unless there is an increase in the jobs in products industry.

However nowadays, there are several product companies professing in areas like gaming, embedded systems and multimedia which are booming in and around Bangalore and Hyderabad. This is a promising trend for the future of the jobs in product sector. Also software product giants like Google have set up their offices at Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Thus we are now (2009) witnessing an increased awareness among Indian youngsters who are choosy of their jobs. Also now there are lots of entrepreneurs emerging in the Industry. Thus future seems very bright for Indian Software Jobs market which predictably can start proving itself in competing areas of product industry as well.

Check here for latest career alerts from India, expert advice and discussion.

Kamalakannan
http://www.careersvalley.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kamalkk_Kannan