The new career opportunities

Tarun Narayan in Mumbai

What will be the career growth opportunities for the year 2002? In order to trace these opportunities, the Indian Institute of Management-Kozhikode (IIM-K), in association with all the leading campuses and corporates across nation recently conducted a comprehensive placement survey research. The prominent highlights include:

* Higher job-enrichment comes with an assignment in the manufacturing sector
* Information Technology will still be an area offering copious growth avenues for learning and exploration. However, the transition will be from instituting mere technology system to technology marketing and integrated business strategies for CRM.
* The increased emphasis of recruiting companies from manufacturing, finance and IT will not just be to test the candidate’s potential to display a strong theoretical understanding. It will also incorporate their holistic and specialist business judgements and flexible mental frameworks where speedier solution-centric approach to problems is indispensable.

The institute as part of the “sample study for inference deliberation” — as the methodology is described — has undertaken a primary statistical analysis of the placement scene in campuses across sectors in the past two years to derive a futuristic analogy.

Says Dr Saji Gopinath, chairperson, placements, IIM-K: “ Any placement initiative should be able to look at the quality and variety of assignments that the job unfolds. That’s the way to build careers out of dreams”.

The survey is just a detailing from the institute’s viewpoint that tries to summarise the career growth trends in corporate India. According to the research, consulting jobs— especially in the areas of general management and international finance— are also areas where there is substantial potential for progress. Insurance banking is another area where there is a considerable opportunity to ensconce career equity.

The insurance banking sector — the biggest option in Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai (JBIMS) — is a pointer to the trend. The reason being boom in the sector. The abundance of unique strategy-based job structures that the sector has laid out is arriving as a factor for a favourable career decision towards the sector.

Sectors like FMCG and consumer durables are the flavours for the year especially for lateral level recruitments. However, the right benefit trickle for entry-level graduates can be initiated in these sectors only with a thorough grounding in logistic management and finance system appraisals, according to the survey.

There are specific growth possibilities within a certain sector that the research collectively identifies. The areas of portfolio management for marketing and finance and also international finance processes are aspects that can sharpen the opportunity to develop a career in the arriving months.

On developing better placement prospects after a year of heavy downslide of the economy, Mr Gopinath remarks: “ The placements scene is definitely not on par as compared to last year. The institute should enjoy excellent relationship with all the previous participating organisations and project the brighter and winning face of the institute to companies”.

Adds Dr Gopinath: “ At IIM-K, for instance, despite the slowdown companies are eager to recruit this year as well because of the quality of work our students have done with them in previous years and also due to the continuous co-ordination and linkages”.

Finally, Mr Gopinath observes that the IT sector may be hit but other sectors have not seen what could be called a very significant drop in recruitment activities.