Hot tech jobs for freshers in 2011

Some of the entry-level jobs in the technical sector that will be in demand in 2011 and how freshers can hone your skills to bag one.

Technical jobs are back, and it is no surprise. The key sectors hiring technical talent are recruiting again.

Technical jobs are back, and it is no surprise. The key sectors hiring technical talent are recruiting again. Whether it is the traditional manufacturing and heavy engineering or the IT sector, we are witnessing a renewed confidence in hiring fresh talent from engineering and technical colleges.

There will be lot of opportunities in core engineering areas of infrastructure development and real estate. Plenty of opportunities are expected in the area of design, project and site management.

The energy sector will be another sector to witness opportunities as lot of green field projects are taking off this year. The roles will be both in the new plants as well as maintenance roles in plants commissioned last year.

Electronics sector will be a mixed bag. While some areas like embedded systems development will witness hiring, other areas such as VLSI design will not find high hiring numbers.

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The author is a Career Counselor and trainer who heads PurpleLeap (http://www.purpleleap.com/), a Pearson-Educomp company, that works with colleges to make students employment-ready.

Telecom sector, that has been a large recruiter of electronics and communications engineers, will also hire fresh talent. However, the hiring numbers will be lower than the revenue growth in this sector. Despite large scale deployment and rollout of 3G, the hiring numbers will not swell as organisations will improve efficiency of operations.

However, telecom sector will be one of the largest opportunity areas for engineering students of communication stream.

The IT sector will remain the largest recruiter of fresh technical talent. We expect about 200,000 fresh technical graduates to get absorbed in calendar year 2011. This number is at the least 5 times the number of fresh engineers taken by any other single sector. Though there will not be a huge salary differential in IT sector, the large hiring number makes it one of the most promising sector for fresh engineers.

Let us take a more detailed analysis of opportunities in this sector.

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Software development that includes application development, testing, maintenance and support has been the growth engine of IT industry in India. In the recent past, we see more opportunities in the area of web development and this trend will continue.

IT infrastructure management services

This includes the complete management of IT Infrastructure of an organisation that includes networking, servers, terminal devices, storage devices etc. If software development was the growth engine for most IT organisations in the last decade, IMS will provide rapid growth in this decade. We expect lot of fresh technical talent to get absorbed in this domain this year.

However, in the midst of all this, as organisations got an opportunity to re-look at their hiring strategy for fresh talent in the year 2009 and 2010, some fundamentals changed as regards to fresh talent recruitment.

To start with, most of the mid-sized organisations and some of the large-sized organisations as well, felt the need for participating in initiatives that reduces their cost of hiring and training a fresh resource.

When it comes to technical talent, organisations are collaborating with educational institutes to impart some of the training to students while they are still in the college. While some companies will bear the complete cost of this training, others may share a portion of the cost.

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The other shift observed last year is a re-look at the requirements of different technical roles and seek talent beyond the traditional pool of engineering students. Last year, we saw more and more companies looking at a pool of science graduates and diploma candidates for roles that traditionally were only reserved for engineering students.

While some part of this shift is due to the fact that the quality of engineering graduates is not meeting the expectations, the other reason for this is the standardisation of roles and competence in the industry.

We expect 10 to 15% shift in IT jobs this year from engineering to non-engineering segment.

In a nutshell, the year 2011 will present 250,000 to 300,000 technical jobs for freshers. However, the expectations from the recruiting organisations have gone up. In light of this, what should some of the aspirants of technical roles do right now.

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Right skill yourself!

Essentially, there are three areas that organisations test in an individual for an entry-level role:

1. Domain skills: These skills refer to the role that you are applying for. For instance, a programming role will require you to have the technical knowledge of the programming domain. For a telecom company, technical knowledge in the area of wireless communication is important.

2. Functional skills: A person needs to know the processes and the tools that are required to do carry out the job. While this is an important criteria, organisations do not expect you to be expert in that area. However, organisations expect some degree of familiarity with the processes and tools so that you can learn on the job.

3. Organisational skills: Your ability to work effectively in an organisational environment that involves deadlines, interacting with others and finally delivering the expected output. Organisations will typically evaluate you on your communication skills and attitude.

So, how can you cultivate these skills while still in the college?

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Utilise the final year judiciously: Most universities provide opportunities to students to develop a technical project or undergo industrial training in the final year. This is the best opportunity to get familiarity with industry practices (functional skills) as well as apply some of the technical skills in a practical application environment.

Secondly, it would be a good idea to deep-skill yourself for specific roles in the industry. You should target a particular role and attain domain and functional expertise for that role.

Another vital aspect is to hone your organisational skills. It is important to know your strengths and be able to communicate the same to the employer.

2011 is the start of a historic decade for India. It took India more than 60 years to become a $1 trillion economy but it will take just another 10 years to cross the $3 trillion figure. It simply means one thing for the workforce entering industry in this decade: This decade is the decade of opportunities! If you get the right start to your career, growth will follow you.