Rediscover the job landscape

An indicator of the popularity of government jobs is the number of subscribers to the blog ‘Sarkari Naukri’ (http://sarkari-naukri.blogspot.com), which lists government jobs in India from Central and State governments, public sector units, courts, universities and banks. It is nearing 50,000, says Manisha Sharma, who runs the blog.

The blog categorises the job listings under different categories such as Faculty/Teacher Jobs, Latest Bank Jobs in India, and IT and Engineering Jobs in India. Most jobs nowadays are for engineers, management trainees, she says. Finance and HR are popular areas, she adds.

A 31-year-old homemaker, she started the blog in June 2006 and spends five to six hours online every day updating the information. “My family members and I missed many good opportunities due to lack of timely information. So, I thought there should be a place where all government job-related information is available,” she says.

With the IT industry maturing, numerous areas beyond software programming are emerging, says Sriram V. Rajagopal, assistant vice-president, HR, Cognizant. What is noteworthy is the continued emphasis and need for strong communication and soft skills in these areas too.

“Two common prevailing myths in the minds of students today are — everyone in IT sector is a developer and only engineers have an IT career,” he says.

IT infrastructure is one such area. It deals with providing clients the ability to optimise, continuously monitor and enhance the performance of their entire IT infrastructure backbone — ranging from server and database infrastructure to email, he says. It also involves managing the IT operations, IT help desk support, systems integration, platform migration and upgrades and consulting services such as IT infrastructure assessment.

Any science or engineering graduate can work in this sector. In some areas, a diploma holder in Computer Science is also considered. While companies usually provide their own training, a recognised certification course in the respective area is valued, he says.

Another area is Knowledge Process Outsourcing. Apart from providing best-in-class call centre and back office-related work which improves and increases the core process capabilities, BPO today provides varied opportunities for graduates of niche disciplines, says Mr. Rajagopal.

The areas covered under a Life Sciences KPO include Clinical Trial Management, Clinical Data Repository, Clinical Data Management, Statistical Programming, Medical Writing, Data Migration and Pharmacovigilance, an area that deals with understanding short and long-term side-effects of medicine.

The educational requirements for this area is a high specialisation in any related domain (medicine, paramedical disciplines, pharma, bio-tech, genetics, law, IPR, etc.) with analytical skills, he says.

For more information visit : www.hindu.com