Cash in on demand for sales professionals

Pervin Malhotra
email your queries to [email protected] 

Q. After doing my MBA from a B-school in Pune, I’ve been working in marketing in a consumer electronics firm. However, I have to suddenly return to my home town in Punjab due to a family emergency. Since we don’t have any family business of our own, I’m very worried about the kind of work I can do here. — Chirag Khanna

A.The increasing purchasing power in Tier-II and III markets has spurred the sale of consumer durables and their financing options in these areas. And with more and more companies expanding into these markets, there’s now a huge demand for experienced sales and consumer-facing personnel — across experience levels, and across sectors like retail, e-commerce, non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), pharma.

The estimated monthly requirement for people like you with a couple of years of sales experience is pegged at 2,000-4,000 sales professionals in each sector (And the requirement is expected to go up, especially during the upcoming festive season). What’s more, these jobs come with better incentives to boot!

So if you have honed your sales acumen and are well-acquainted with your topography, you’re in luck!

Direct admission in MA in music

Q.I have done BA in English and geography. Currently I am doing MA in English, but I want to do MA in music. I have a good voice and interestin this subject  also and want to make my career as a singer. Can I get direct admission in MA music? If yes please tell me names of some good institutions. — Mallika Sengupta

A. While continuing with your MA in English, you can join a reputed local music school that imparts training in the various gharanas of music. Some of these schools even prepare you for taking the requisite qualifying exams – from the bachelor’s level (Visharad) to master’s level (Nipurn /Praveen / Alankar) of reputed music institutions such as the Bhatkhande Sangeet Vidyapeeth,  Lucknow or Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, Mumbai or Prayag Sangeet Samiti, Allahabad. Of course, if you can afford the luxury, there’s nothing like training privately under a good teacher. Many established performers run their own schools of music or take on private students.

As far as classical music is concerned, the time-tested guru-shishya parampara is irreplaceable. A traditional guru helps the student internalise all the formal rules and nuances of the raga so that they become flawlessly integrated into your performance.

Each gharana (school) embodies the historic and cultural vitality of a region with its subtle and yet distinctive characteristics that simply can’t be taught in the classroom through a formal academic syllabus.

What are the job prospects in radiological physics?

Q.I’m a student of BSc Physics. Can you tell me something about radiological physics and its future prospects? — Jasjeet Thapar

A. Radiological physics that finds wide applications in diagnostics, therapy, nuclear medicine, industry, agriculture and research, has emerged as an attractive career option thanks to its wide range of applications and the increasing demand for experts in this field. While radiation therapy has undergone tremendous modernisation with the induction of computers and high precision tools, there’s a dearth of technically sound people. Availability of more trained professionals will be a boon for this field.

Medical physicists play an important role when it comes to the meticulous planning of treatment, quality assurance and Dosimetry. The latter refers to the status of wearing a personnel badge that measures and monitors dose. It may also refer to dose history and the records where dose history is maintained. More specifically, radiation dosimetry calculates the absorbed dose in tissue resulting from exposure to ionizing radiation.

As more and more hospitals offer modern radiation therapy facilities in India, the demand for medical physicists will only rise. As radiological physics helps increase the shelf-life of perishable agricultural products during large-scale packaging for export, these professionals are in demand in this sector too. Several industries hire these professionals as radiological safety officers. You need to be extremely alert and only highly skilled people can handle the job effectively.

There’s a dearth of trained teachers in radiological physics in India which leads to poor quality of professionals. The subject is offered at the MSc and Postgraduate Diploma level at several universities including Guru Punjab University, Gobind Singh Indraprastha University,

School of Basic & Applied Science, Dwarka, Anna University, BAARC, Mumbai (after MSc), University of Calicut, AIIMS, University of Mysore, Manipal University, Bharthiar University, Sardar Patel University etc.