Small is beautiful

For those who can navigate chaos, and manage on a smaller pay cheque, smaller firms can however offer good opportunities. “You get a T shaped learning at a small company — deep knowledge in few areas and broader learning in a variety of verticals”, says Thodla. Also, those who want to start their own ventures may benefit from the practical learning.

“Presumably every MBA wants to be a CEO some day. If that is the long-term career plan, it is better to start with a smaller company. You can learn multiple functions and can grow with the company”, advises Kurien.

But given the many risks, it is imperative to choose your employer wisely. The term ‘start-up’ is used a bit loosely and you must know what stage they are in to decide on the suitability. “It may be safer to opt for start-ups that see customer traction and have possibly received some funding. Very small start-ups may offer greater learning, but may be too risky”, says Thodla.

Kunal Sen, Senior Vice-President, TeamLease Services, lists three main aspects you must deliberate on. One, look at the qualities of the founders — most start-up failures are due to weak leadership. Two, find out the work environment and the company’s HR policies for your job profile. This is important as the work can be hectic and stressful. Three, look at your job role including your responsibilities, targets and growth path. “There may not be a clear description of what the job entails, and the start-up may expect you to perform a number of tasks”, says Sen.

What to pick

So how does one select one’s first employer? Experts advise that, rather than look at size or sector, you must focus on the quality of work and how you fit into it. For instance, Sen observes that lack of a clear job description in a small company may bother some people, but may be seen as a perk by others.

Also, most smaller firms don’t want employees who are there to just do a job but want them to push the envelope. “You should evaluate if you have the ability to challenge the status quo and mediocrity. Individuals who can’t live up to the quality or can’t challenge the mediocrity will struggle to enjoy and sustain in a start-up”, cautions Gundecha.Thodla advises that students run their own business even while in college to see if they enjoy the process and choose accordingly. Pradeep Kumar is agnostic to the company’s size and believes that, at the end of day, the choice would depend a lot on the culture of the organisation you are joining. “Irrespective of what you pick, talk to your boss and your team; understand more about your role and what is expected of you; evaluate how the growth path might look like, before you sign up”, he says.

Kurien says that what is taught in B-school is a lot of management techniques and rational analysis which are left-brain based. “Business is not just that. You need a lot of intuition to do well in business”, he says. And so it is in the business of deciding who your get your first pay-cheque from.

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This article was first published in Business Line on Campus:

Other options in financial sector

As we know Finance is one of the fastest growing sectors not only in India but across the globe and there is great demand for professionals like Chartered Accountant (course offered by Institute of Chartered Accountants of India – ICAI); Company Secretary (CS) by Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) and Cost and Work Accountant (CWA) by Institute of Cost Accountants of India. Any student who has passed 10+2 can register for these three courses. More or less all three have some common papers but the way you learn core subjects differ.

A thorough understanding of banking concepts, tools, will ensure your productivity. So, invest your time in learning and preparing for a banking job so that not only you get the job, but you are able to prosper in it from Day-1.

Deodutta KuraneEXPERT COLUMN

Deodutta Kurane,
Group President,
Human Capital Management, YES Bank

The Indian banking sector is in a state of transition with new-age, innovative banking models already being rolled out with product and service offerings targeted at different customer segments. The banking staff responsible for the design, delivery and service of specific offerings needs to have differentiated skills and competencies aligned to the respective product and customer segment.
As in any other field, the positions requiring more specialized knowledge/skills command a premium. Hence candidates aspiring for an accelerated career growth in this sector need to equip themselves with the requisite knowledge well in time so that they can capitalize on the ever-increasing opportunities. There are also some specialized courses required from a regulatory perspective mandated by IRDA, SEBI etc. Roles in BFSI range from the front line sales/service positions to Relationship Management roles and the more specialized product roles including Trade Finance, Financial Markets, Cash Management Risk Management, Investment banking, Financial Technology etc.

Deriving meaningful and predictive insights from large data is an emerging area in information technology and analytics, applicable not only in banking, but across all industries and sectors. In the years to come, this will become a key driver for strategy formulation to product development, design & delivery, risk management and ‘augmented’ experience.

It can be truly said that banking is the confluence of various enriching and attractive career options. Candidates with the right attitude, skill sets and mind set have a plethora of growth opportunities which can culminate in exciting and highly rewarding professional destinations.

This article was published in Career 360

The government has understood that aggregating jobs is a challenge and the best way to do is through collaboration, said Vivek Chandok, chief executive of website Saral Rozgar, a jobs website run by Tech Mahindra Ltd. “When you create an online platform, it has its own challenge of language, last mile connectivity and bringing blue collar workers on board. “Here, we come to the picture—who can bring white, blue and grey collar workers on one platform,” Chandok said.

Manish Sabharwal, chairman of staffing company TeamLease Services, said the country does not have a job problem but wage problem and the efforts everyone is making is to take informal workforce to the formal workforce pool.

“For a clear picture of the number of jobs available, one must keep a track of both formal and informal private jobs available and the government is trying to achieve that,” said Nirmal Singh, chief executive of job assessment and matching company Wheebox that has tied up with the labour ministry.

Aggregating jobs in one platform will give a sense of what is available and where is the gap, he said.

“It’s a win-win for government, private job boards like us and employers,” said Amit Garg, executive director (Digital) at HT Media Ltd, which runs Shine.com and is also the publisher of Mint.
At any given point of time, Shine.com has between 150,000 to 200,000 job postings and when big companies like us come together it will improve the visibility of government’s efforts, Garg said.

“While the government’s efforts will get more visibility, job portals will get more traffic because the talent pool registered with the government and the employers will have more choice,” he explained. “Now technology is available to aggregate jobs in real-time and government can make use of our resources and postings to build a system that will help in gap analysis and better policy making.”

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This article was published in Mint

An article in Hindustan Times talks about how the median salary offered by companies at IIT-B has increased by 6.5% during last academic year; along with inputs from Rituparna Chakraborty.
The median salary offered by companies at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) increased by 6.5% during last academic year, reveals the institute’s placement report.

The report put the annual median salary at Rs9.8 lakh in 2015-16, up from Rs9.2 lakh in 2014-15. In other words, half the IITians received salary packages upward of approximately Rs10 lakh per annum in the previous academic year.

While the highest salaries often touched Rs1 crore, the majority of students got much smaller pay-scales. The institute doesn’t provide the average salary figures — which indicate overall variation in packages.

Nonetheless, the data reveals that students received better packages this year, with more companies offering higher salaries.

For example, in the last placement season, 96 companies offered more than Rs11 lakh per annum, the highest bracket (see the box), to 435 (38%) out of 1,143 candidates. In 2014-15, 365 (33%) out of 1,118 students received packages in the highest bracket from 74 companies.

While the number of candidates who were offered jobs didn’t change significantly during last academic year, the count of companies which offered jobs rose from 274 in 2014-15 to 308 in 2015-16.

In the recent years, the premier institute has been witnessing a steady, if not a sizeable, swelling of packages. In the three years between 2010-11 and 2013-14, the median salary offered by companies visiting IIT-B rose from Rs7.6 lakh to Rs9.1 lakh.

Rituparna Chakraborty, executive vice-president at TeamLease Serices, a human resources consulting agency, said that if while the current rise in median salary is “acceptable” — even if one is to factor in inflation — it’s not “dramatic”.

“The job market has saturated for engineers and even the IT sector, which remains the largest recruiter of engineers, isn’t hiring in large numbers. However, compared to the starting salaries of engineering graduates from colleges other than IITs, many of whom start with Rs10,000 a month, the packages offered to IITians are good,” she said. She added that unless the Prime Minister’s Make-in-India initiative bears fruits, the salaries won’t see a jump at the premier institute.

According to the institute, the majority of its past recruiters came back last year and recruited in large numbers. “IIT-B graduates are in demand among the top recruiters in various segments of the economy. [The upcoming placement season] will be even more crucial in the coming years as campus placements become more intense due to increased corporate competitiveness, heightened student aspirations, a rapidly changing job market and an increasingly insecure global economy,” concludes the report.

This article was published in Hindustan Times

An article in youstory.com talks about how job seekers have become more cautious while considering offers from startups as they present substantial risk to their long-term goals; along with inputs from Sudeep Sen.
According to experts, job seekers have become more cautious while considering offers from startups as they present substantial risk to their long-term goals.

Hiring consultancy Michael Page’s Director Ankit Agarwala told PTI.

With the premier tech school IIT Bombay blacklisting nine startups, job seekers have become more cautious before accepting offers from them. There could be more job seekers declining offers from these companies as they will weigh the substantial risk they need to take while making such career moves as they consider their long-term professional goals.
Recently, IIT Bombay had blacklisted nine startups for one year as a penalty for various violations, including revoking offers to some graduates. Startups are generally hiring cautiously and focusing mainly on critical or essential roles that will directly contribute to the productivity of the organisation, Agarwala said.

Compared to the previous year, we are seeing tighter control on head count expenditure… there is a strategic move from firms to hire mainly for key roles instead of undergoing large scale expansion, he added.
It will mean that these startups will need to work harder in attracting talent in order to convince senior and high-potential candidates to come onboard, he said.

Echoing a similar view, TeamLease Assistant Vice President Sudeep Sen said that with time to come, startups will be cautious to hire and the incumbents will be doing deeper scrutiny as well.

The onus would be on the startups to have a clear business plan, including reliable funding sources, to build the confidence of senior candidates in the business and financial stability of the organisation, he pointed out.
GlobalHunt Managing Director Sunil Goel said top institutes want to give a very good start to their students, which they think should not be measured only on salary offered but also validity and assurance to honour the offer letter and sustainability of the job. The IIT-Bombay ban on nine startups would have about 15-20 percent impact on other premier institutes inviting such companies into their campuses, Sen said.

Such companies have to pass through acid test of ‘start up employer qualifier’, where valid business plans, long-term stay, return on investment (ROI) and investors, among others, will be scrutinised, he added.
Moreover, the millennials are still excited about startups as they get multi-activity experience in a very short time, contrary to a structured system at the initial stage of their career, GlobalHunt’s Goel felt. However, Goel added that good business models with decent and sizeable investment back-ups are likely to attract the pool of best talent available and will continue to grow at 15-20 percent in coming years.

This article was published in yourstory.com

An article in Mint talks about how job creation in India can be boosted; along with inputs from Manish Sabharwal.
Two key areas — more regular wage employment and female employment—need urgent attention, say experts.

Over 600 million people in India are under 35 and an efficient workforce can help boost the country’s productivity thus economy.

India’s job problem is complex, and to create more jobs, the country must reduce regulations for industries, focus on urbanisation and boost manufacturing, a panel of experts from industry and World Bank said Wednesday at the India Summit organised by The Economist.

The question is whether India can create a million jobs every month, said Martin Rama, chief economist, South Asia at World Bank.

Rama said there is a gap, and the number of jobs are falling. India, he said, has two key areas which need urgent attention: one, more regular wage employment, and two, female employment.

The female labor force participation rate in India is less than 23%. Around 20% of the total labour force earns regular wages.

“Unless we reduce regulatory cholesterol and improve the efficiency of people, it will be a tough environment. The role of the government is to create a conducive atmosphere,” said Manish Sabharwal, chairman of Teamlease Services, a staffing company.

He said India does not have a job problem but wage problem, and efforts must be made to shift the informal workforce to formal job creation in India.

Urbanisation, overregulation, and human capital are three areas that need urgent attention to address the employment problem.

Over-regulation and the multiplicity of laws are restricting the growth of industries, he said. India has 63 million companies, and 12 million of them do not even have offices. Of the total number of companies, just 18,000 have a paid-up capital of Rs. 10 crore each, Sabharwal explained.

Suraj Saharan, co-founder and chief people officer of Delhivery, a logistics company serving e-commerce firms, echoed the sentiments of the Teamlease chairman. The compliance burden is huge, said Saharan, adding that there are too many laws and too much paperwork.

Saharan said the country needs to have a database of workers to facilitate clean hiring, as background checks on employees right now is a tedious process.

However, all three believe that the demographic bulge in India is not a problem, and things have started improving over the last few years. Over 600 million people in India are under 35, and an efficient workforce can help boost the country’s productivity thus economy.

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This article was published in Mint

Legal experts point out lacunae in the law and the fact that the judiciary has interpreted the law in various ways. The Supreme Court in its judgment in the RK Panda vs Steel Authority of India case said workers continuing in employment for 10 years should be absorbed as regular employees. But in a separate case, Steel Authority of India vs National Water Front Workers, the court ruled there was no provision in the law implying absorption of contract workers.

Experts say the archaic law forces many companies to subvert it, denying adequate legal protection to contract workers. “When this law was made, only the bipartisan nature of negotiation was kept in mind. It has to change in the current scenario,” says Rituparna Chakraborty, senior vice-president of staffing company TeamLease.

Moreover, the process of hiring contract workers is a tedious one. An organisation with offices across the country has to seek registration by declaring the number of vendors who supply contract workers in each office, based on which forms are issued by separate states. Every vendor in every premise has to seek a licence on that basis. Many companies find ways to subvert the law by hiring contract workers through third-party agents. “The government should make licensing for staffing firms compulsory to weed out fly-by-night operators,” says Chakraborty.

The government is waking up to the reality of flexi-staffing. It recently allowed temporary workers in the garment industry. The decision to set the minimum wage of 110,000 a month for contract workers is another step in that direction. “Contract work is now a reality; the government understands that, and is working towards facilitating it,” noted Shankar Agarwal, secretary in the labour and employment ministry.

FOR MORE EFFECTIVE LAW

• Industry wants simplification of the Act for easy compliance
• Register staffing firms to weed out fly-by-night operators
• Labour unions want pay parity between regular and contract workers
• Amendment of the Act to remove the word “abolition”

This article was published in Business Standard

An article in Indian Express, talks about signaling value report by TeamLease; along with inputs from Rituparna Chakraborty.

The report further says that skills education accounts for 4 percent of the overall education industry market size in terms of revenue.

VOCATIONAL COURSES saw a 7.5 percent rise in demand across the state this year, even as more than 1.17 lakh students were admitted to Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), a report by TeamLease, a human resource consultant, has said. Around 92 per cent seats have been filled in government-run ITIs, as against private ITIs which saw fewer takers with 77.4 per cent seats filled.

While there has been a rise in demand, the degree may not correspond to the requirement for skilled labour force in the country, the report says. Only 2 percent of the labour force is formally trained and 8 percent acquire skills on the job. The demand supply gap is stark with 12.8 million people entering the workforce every year, stated the report.

The report further says that skills education accounts for 4 percent of the overall education industry market size in terms of revenue.

The report blames ‘low-status’ stigma attached to vocational courses for the low enrollment statistics. It says that those with degrees are preferred by industries over those with ITI certificates.

“Students joining ITIs don’t see the benefit of a vocational course in their professions, especially when compared to mainstream degrees such as engineering,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder and Executive Vice-President of TeamLease.

Chakraborty said the outdated and archaic curriculum was to blame. “There is a need to overhaul the entire syllabus at ITIs,” she said.
Meanwhile Nitin More, a former ITI student union member, said ITI certificate holders are technically sounder than their engineering counterparts owing to the practical training.

He said ITI certificate courses are a way out for those who want to earn a living even while studying.

The TeamLease report said short-term skill development courses are the way forward — ‘courses that are focused on specific, job-relevant skills and which take between two and six months for a candidate to complete.’

This article was published in Indian Express

Even a company like Deoitte, an audit and consulting firm that values specialisation, likes entrepreneurs, even failed ones, for their felicity with mixed roles. “I have hired several entrepreneurs who failed. They are like sharks in fish tanks. These guys, by nature, are disruptive and flexible, and have strong communication skills. People around startup guys in a traditional organisation get to learn a lot from them,” says SV Nathan, chief talent officer at Deloitte India.

All these companies hire failed entrepreneurs knowing that they may not hang around for long. Once they have tasted entrepreneurship, they are likely to try it again. But while they are around, they teach others the value of resources, and leave behind invaluable ideas. The challenge for the employer is to match their aspirations. “We are predisposed towards such employees, but it also involves the risk of losing them as they always have the desire to build a great company on their own,” says a spokesperson for Paytm.

However, it is not all rosy for failed entrepreneurs. For all the attractiveness of their maturity and their ideas, employers are stingy in paying them. “Most of the organisations hire them at their existing salaries, with average increments ranging between zero to 10%,” says Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder of Teamlease Services, the staffing firm.

This article was publisshed in Hindustan Times

“Layoffs are largely triggered by three developments – redundancies, termination of projects and automation of L1 roles,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, TeamLease Services Co-founder and Senior Vice-President.

She predicted that there will be immediate job cuts of people with redundant skills and underperformers.

For L1 (level 1) roles, more non-engineers are likely to be hired or some of the activities could be automated, she said, adding that it will trigger need for constant skill upgrades.

The IT and start-up industry is in a state of flux, driven by two factors — margin pressures and adaptation of emerging automation and artificial intelligence tools. Hence, constant upgradation of skills is key to success of an employee under this new reality.

“Multiple analyst reports indicate that medium and high skilled jobs are expected to continue to grow at a fast clip in the industry, providing cheer to employees who continue to upgrade their skills,” said Nishith Upadhyaya, SHRM India Head – Advisory and Knowledge.

With salary costs getting close to 70 per cent of the project costs, thin margins result in more scrutiny of non-billable resources, according to Vinu Nair, Managing Partner, Antal International Network, India.

The overall job market outlook though appears bullish, the analysts said.

“The demand for laterals with 5-12 years of experience is on the rise and the key for people in this experience range would be to remain hands-on. Director-level roles will remain a notch below recent years, mainly because net new projects are lower,” Nair said.

The business potential for Indian IT and ITeS companies is huge, but they need to work consistently on innovation service quality and cost to attract the rest of the world to continue to invest in India for their offshore/non-customer interface job centres in India, suggested GlobalHunt MD Sunil Goel.

TeamLease’s Chakraborty further said low-skilled jobs are not aspirational for any economy or country in the long run. As a region prospers through increase in per capita income, low-level jobs are either taken over by people from lesser prosperous regions or get automated.

This article was published in Business Standard:http://goo.gl/EqonBU

Here are the Top 10 Jobs to explore in 2016

1. Web Production Lead: annual median salary 7.5L, Growth Outlook – Positive

Why is it in demand? Complete ownership of the task from start (submitting the task in the queue) to end (till it goes live)

2. Simulation Engineers: annual median salary 4.5L, Growth Outlook – 4%

Why is it in demand: fast product development, lower testing needs, which is highly time consuming, Identify high-value features and technology for simulation products

3. Research Specialist: annual median salary 4.25L, Growth Outlook – 16%

Why is it in demand? Potential Testing skills to research on new drugs, devices and biologics. The tremendous increase in medical technology and information, Improved and streamlined the clinical research programs with most research methodologies in order to shorten the development timelines and control the cost for new product development.

4. Product designer: annual median salary 4.0L, Growth Outlook – Positive

Why is it in demand? India has become the hub for design outsourcing and for foreign corporates and MNCs who are seeking help of Indian design companies to execute quality goods, Indian companies are also increasingly designing their own products, hence recruiting more designers in the sample endeavour.

5. Design Engineer (UniGraphics): annual median salary 3.5L, Growth Outlook – Positive

Why is it in demand – Research new Developments and innovations with original, Turn those research ideas into technical plans, Consider cost, effectiveness and safety of new designs.

6. Sales Executive (PUF Panels): annual median salary 3.2L, Growth Outlook – Positive

Why is it in demand? – Create brand awareness in the market through online & offline Marketing tie-up, initiating various offline activities through corporate tie-ups, Selection and forming alliances with new channel partners.

7. Store Promoter – annual median salary 1.5L, Growth Outlook – Positive

Why is it in demand – Conducting lectures, using films, charts, and/or slide shows, Create a positive image and lead consumers about usage of the product, Distribute product samples, brochures, flyers etc. to source new sales opportunities, Collect real-time feedback, Quick Implementation of Actions on feedback to generate sales.

8. Digital marketing Head – annual median salary 30L, Growth Outlook: 70000 Jobs

Why is it in demand – To meet the growing demand amid a sharp increase in the number of people accessing the internet, It is critical for such companies to have the right person to lead the digital marketing team, Companies across sectors are ramping up their digital marketing teams and the job profile is slowly but surely attracting more attention because it’s seen as relatively stable and talent is as yet scarce.

9. Back office – annual median salary 3.0L, Growth Outlook – Positive

Why is it in demand – Handle customer’s call/queries/mails and provide them effective solutions at ground level, support the existing customers in terms of providing the accurate data, guiding them regarding various investment/financial plans.

10. CNC machine engineer – annual median salary 5.15L, Growth Outlook – 17%

Why is it in demand – Engineers can take advantage of the cost savings accrued by using high end machines to turn raw materials into final products with a high level of accuracy and efficiency what most of the other jobs doesn’t suffice the objectives.

The demand for these jobs is gaining enough steam that institutions of higher education are paying attention and developing some course materials.

Man vs machine

This is a great cause of worry for the government. Even more so given that across India’s manufacturing spectrum as well – which is a new thrust area for the Modi government with initiatives like ‘Make in India’ designed specifically to give the sector a fillip – the jobs pledge is sounding increasingly like a day-time reverie.

A trip to Ludhiana’s famed knitwear and textiles cluster points to the anxieties that economists have expressed about modern machinery replacing human toil. At Jyoti Textile Mills – a lungi manufacturing unit with 60 whirring shuttle looms – four new upgraded machines will replace the job of 12 looms and improve production by three times in the coming years.

“Erratic labour conditions and changing trends, which demand a better finish is forcing us to automate,” said Kshitij Ghai, the proprietor of this small scale enterprise.

These ground realities are borne out by wider studies like the one jointly conducted by industry body Texprocil and Ernst & Young, which suggests that even as the market size of textiles grows by 40% to $142 billion in the next five years, industrial automation is likely to hit job creation significantly. The new textiles policy targets one crore new jobs, but the study estimates that realistically, only 29 lakh jobs are likely to be created in the next five years.

Questions are also being raised about how significantly the ‘Make in India’ bogie will contribute to the targeted job growth, which is one of its key stated goals.

While foreign direct investment in India surged to $62 billion between October 2014 and May 2016, a chunk of it has gone to the services sector and what has come into manufacturing under ‘Make in India’ is unlikely to spur job figures, reckon experts.

Reports show how robots have gradually begun taking over functions across an array of automobile plants that are owned by global players such as Volkswagen, Ford and Hyundai in India. There is no reason to believe that the new FDI money that comes in is any less likely to sacrifice the cost and product efficiencies of industrial automation – a global trend – for the altruistic purpose of mass job creation.

Global practices of greenfield investors, in fact, don’t do much to instil confidence on this front. The Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer, Foxconn, which has signed a pact to invest $5 billion over five years in a semi-conductor facility in Maharashtra – which is amongst the largest single FDI flow into the country – has said that it expects to generate employment for about 50,000 people in the country. But across its other global factories, the Apple and Samsung supplier has replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots in May of this year. It remains to be seen whether things will pan out as planned for Foxconn’s hiring plans back home, particularly given how little has changed in terms of labour reform and the other byzantine regulations that guide large scale industries.

An existential crisis

Modi inherited from the previous government a sorry legacy of what has come to be known as a decade of “jobless growth”. But clearly, as the last two years have shown, his problems have only been compounded by these new existential threats that weren’t entirely unforeseen, but are being rather hugely underestimated as unrealistic job promises are being doled out.

The government is now faced with a double whammy of a demand destruction in the developed West (which has affected job creating export sectors) met with the rise of machines that is causing a labour market destruction across the economy. It is prematurely deindustrialising a country that is neither sufficiently innovative to face up to the threats posed by artificial intelligence, nor equipped with the strength and willingness to build on its mainstay capabilities in agriculture and other traditional industries.

This has great social and political implications, as Aseem Shrivastava, a Delhi-based economist explains in the Economic & Political Weekly, “the drying up of jobs in the mainstream corporate-led economy means there is suddenly far greater demand for government positions and for caste-based reservations for such jobs.”
It also puts into question the very premise of the argument posited by successive liberal governments and policymakers that, with development, millions of Indians will migrate from occupations such as agriculture to more “productive” and “lucrative” ones in the industrial and services sector.

“This promise is far from being met. However, it exists as a real fantasy in the minds of millions of young Indians… The flood tide of support from urban and urbanising youth, which was crucial in bringing Narendra Modi and the [BJP] to office, is more than likely to turn against him in 2019, unless he achieves the impossible and in fact delivers the promised jobs,” warns Shrivastava. “The data is not on his side.”

This article was published in The Wire