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Q Last year our daughter lost her leg after a road accident. She is a graduate with excellent communication skills but now she says that no good firm will hire her due to her disability. We are very worried about her future. Please advice. A
I fully understand your anguish but feeling helpless doesn’t help. Moreover, why should your daughter allow what she can’t do to interfere with what she can do? What would have been construed as a disability earlier is no longer so in today’s age. Let me give you an example. It’s no secret that the biggest challenge facing India’s sunshine BPO industry — is the high attrition rates. Right from the entry level to managerial level they are as high as 30-50 per cent. Call centre recruitment heads are confounded by horror stories where an employee switched eight jobs, each time with a fatter pay package — without putting in a single day of work! According to one estimate, the BPO job-hop is eating into 25 per cent of the revenue of most companies. BPOs like Genpact (formerly Gecis), TransWorks, Progeon Ltd and 24/7 Customer, which did not have a single physically, challenged person on their rolls a couple of years back, now boast of several differently abled employees. FICCI’s Socio Economic Development Foundation is promoting corporate responsibility in an effort to try and fit a particular type of disability with the requirement of a particular industry. Corporate houses are increasingly realising that it makes `business sense’ to invest in people with different abilities and not tag them as a `burden’ or charity. And what’s more, these companies swear by their new set of employees who may be physically disadvantaged but bring with them stability and a high level of commitment to the job. For now, this is an unwritten recruitment policy that has come into effect and your son has a good chance of gaining employment in areas like quality control, email processing, data entry, voice and accent training or in the human resource cell etc. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) is yet another option. Do ask your son to read up on it on the Internet. Moreover, nothing stops him from pursuing higher studies alongside. In fact, I would urge him to do so — albeit through the distance learning mode. Online tuition may be yet another option which is catching up. Indian tutors are coaching students in the US and Europe via internet. These are just a few sample options. There are literally hundreds of other opportunities — professional as well as entrepreneurial which can be explored. As parents you can play a critical role in building your child’s self-confidence - even if it means gently pushing her to overcome her initial diffidence. Don’t let a physical disability confine her mind or spirit - get her fitted with a good prosthesis and encourage her to go out and conquer the world. The future belongs to those who seek it. Be game for this work
— Mrigesh Lohani A You are a rare breed – an Indian IT professional who is also a video games enthusiast. Hence your employment prospects are very high. The organised gaming industry in India is worth Rs 100 crore and growing by 100 percent annually. But since there is little serious gaming culture in India, there are very few game designers in the country. Needless to say, a game designer must have passion for games in the first place. According to industry estimates, there is a shortage of around 600 game designers in India. As a result, companies are hiring designers from abroad at a higher cost; The other alternative being to groom in-house talent with a 2-3 year gestation period. Teacher training
— Naina Chahal A No, the minimum educational qualification for this two-year academic programme is Senior Secondary (Class 12) or equivalent. Also, the candidate must have passed every subject in Class 10 exam. Selection is based on merit — marks obtained in different exams, percentage of marks obtained in Class 12 with some weightage for percentage of marks scored in bachelor’s and postgraduate degree exams. There is a separate merit list for male and female candidates and their selection is done on a 50 : 50 ratio. The upper age limit is 27 with 5-year relaxation for SC and BC candidates.
Civil exams & civility
Q I have cleared the Civil Services Prelims. I am quite confident about my subject matter, but I’m not very confident of my articulation and communication skills in English. — Kokila Kumari A Civil Services candidates are increasingly opting to write the exam and even be interviewed in their own language, rather than in English. What is your mother tongue? Which language are you most comfortable in? So what, if it’s not English. You know, over the years, the percentage of CS candidates using an Indian language as the medium of interview has gone up from 16 per cent in 1998 to 24 per cent in 2004. Of these, an overwhelming majority, 85 per cent chose Hindi as the medium of interview making it the language of choice for one out of every five candidates interviewed between 1998 and 2004. Marathi, Telugu and Tamil are the other popular choices in that order. However, their percentages are small compared to Hindi, just over 4per cent, 3.5 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively. Malayalam, Sanskrit and Punjabi seem to be falling into disuse with just one person each choosing these languages in the seven years between 1998 and 2004. Gujarati and Kannada are still chosen by a small number and Urdu has a slim presence of just three candidates opting for it in 7 years. The number of candidates opting for Hindi has been going up steadily over the years and their percentage rose from 12 per cent in 1998 to 26 per cent in 2003 and has stayed above 20 per cent since. B-school beckons
Q I am an engineer by profession, and have worked in an MNC for 6 years. To improve my career prospects, I want to study management at ISB or one of the B-schools preferably in the US or Canada, which – of course – entails writing the GMAT. Can you give me some advice about preparing for the test, including joining some good coaching institute? — Dinesh Diwan A You can register for GMAT and get some of the most important study materials (including previous questions) as well as a lot of relevant information about the test from the official GMAT website: www.mba.com. Besides that, various guidebooks are available in the market. Of them, among the most respected are those from Princeton Review and Kaplan. These two institutions also form the two most respected test preparation companies in the USA, coaching for, among others, GMAT. Both have franchises in major cities of India. I must add, they have some very good competition in India. Furthermore, there are websites; many of them form a near inexhaustible source of GMAT practice questions and charge the patrons for the same. Some of them are: scoretop.com, gmatclub.com and www.manhattangmat.com. Explore www.mba.com thoroughly, browse through bookstores, surf the coaching websites, visit the coaching institutes and ask your peers and others who have used some of these mediums for preparation, about their efficacy. That you will give you a better idea about how to go about your preparation. I must add a word of caution here. It’s not the tricks which the guidebooks give youor the tips that teachers teach you or the questions that websites provide you that will make you score well in the GMAT, but it’s what all you do with all that is offered that really matters. The main tips for scoring in an examination like this are just three: practice, practice, and practice. Best of luck!
Placement problem
Q My daughter is writing her final exams of her B Tech (Comp Sc). Due to some family reasons, she missed out the campus placement interviews. Now she is facing the prospect of graduating jobless when most of her classmates already have job offers. What do you advise? — M.P. Jaiswal A
While I would advise students to never miss campus placement interviews, there is a possibility your daughter can explore. Some of the IT companies, including Wipro, are increasingly using internal employee referrals to recruit new employees. Often the employees are paid rewards whenever they refer any prospective employee to the company. Part of the reason is that, when compared to those recruited through other channels, people recruited through employee referrals generally make a better fit with the organisation’s needs because they tend to bring more compatible skills, are more familiar with the environment and are less likely to leave the company in the long run. Hopefully, your daughter has friends and acquaintances, including her brothers, in some of such IT companies. The writer is a noted career consultant
Please send in your query, preferably on a postcard, along with your full name, complete address and academic qualifications to: Editor, Jobs and Careers, The Tribune, Sector 29, Chandigarh-160030, or at
careers@tribunemail.com
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Q I am in the first year of B Tech (IT). I am a video games enthusiast and would prefer to join one of the firms designing video games. What are the employment prospects in the gaming industry in India?
Q Can you please tell me whether graduation is necessary to enroll for elementary teacher training courses? 
