Wednesday 24 June 2015

Top Five IT Skill-Sets That Will Get You Hired

Now is the cool age, replete with technology and innovation. If you are looking to make a great career in the IT job market, then you should know that having old IT skills equals being jobless. Cruel as it may sound, the IT job market and its needs are changing at a dynamic pace, and if you don’t keep up, you will be history.


There are innumerable job oriented training programs and certified/non-certified courses. For those willing to learn and upgrade their skills constantly, the IT industry definitely has good news. Here are the top five IT skills that are bound to get you lucrative placements and good pay packages first-hand:




1    Cloud Skills

With the growing interest in cloud computing,IT systems and services are shifting to the cloud. This trend will drive the demand for networking professionals with cloud experience. Enterprises will move onto hybrid cloud models to free up resources by transferring selected functions to the cloud. According to PCWorld, almost 90% businesses are now adopting the cloud and this means professionals with cloud skills are in high demand.



2   Cybersecurity Skills

Cybersecurity is no doubt one of the biggest concerns for enterprises. Corporate heads spend sleepless nights over data breaches and information leaks. Companies are investing heavily on identity management, access control, virus protection and intrusion prevention. They are thus proactively looking for professionals who can attend to threats and identify gaps in security.



3   Big Data Skills

Job postings for big dataare doubling every year. The demand for expertise in big data is booming across all industry sectors. With increasing amounts of data available, the ability to manage and sift through terrabytes of information to find what’s relevant and important is seen as a prized skill. Top organizations rely on data-based decision making and so, if you have the ability to extract usable information that drives business, you may never stay jobless.Those with database handling capabilities find good response from companies during placements.



4   NoSQLSkills

Real-time web apps and big data are often based on NoSQL databases. These allow a more flexible and scalable storage and retrieval of data when compared to traditional databases. As the need for NoSQL is increasing in the IT sector, the demand for professionals with NoSQL expertise is also on the rise.



5   Puppet Skills

Puppet is fast gaining a strong foothold in the IT industry. This open source IT automation and orchestration tool is used to automate most tasks that are otherwise performed manually by task sysadmins. IT infrastructures are growing exponentially and the Puppet automation tool is believed to be one of the only few ways of handling this growth. Puppet helps free up sysadminsfor other tasks that drive value.
The rapidly changing needs of the IT industry demand that graduates keep up with latest skills. While numerous job oriented training courses have cropped up to meet that demand, it is imperative that students choose the right ones. Developing advanced IT skill sets ensure you stay on top of the job chain.

Tuesday 23 June 2015

Importance of Soft-Skills for Engineering Job Placements

While engineering students realise the importance of technical expertise and mathematical proficiency for a successful career, they tend to underestimate the value of soft skills. To make a mark in today’s workplace or even for job placement, soft skills are becoming an indispensable requirement. Even if you a highly able engineer, you will need soft skills to be able to thrive in the demanding technological and corporate landscape.

Technical Skills versus Soft Skills
Technical skills or ‘hard skills’ as they are called refer to the knowledge-intensive abilities of individuals such as the technical know-how of tools and techniques. This includes the ability to operate particular machinery, ability to analyse data or use software programs, and so on. On the other, soft skills cannot be easily defined. They more closely refer to interpersonal or character traits of individuals such as leadership, creativity, communication, attitude, adaptability and other people skills. It is important to note that when choosing between two individuals with equally good hard skills, recruiters during job placementprefer the one with better soft skills. This is because individuals with good soft skills have better workplace attitude, work ethic, emotional intelligence, and other attributes that make him an important asset for an organization. Soft skill development thus is as important as technical training.

How Soft Skills Help
Individuals with good soft skills emerge as leaders in their work spheres. Even if you are an engineer, a doctor or a banker, you need to know how to get along with people. You need to be able to delegate, display positivity, solve problems, build teams and motivate colleagues. All projects at a workplace involve team work and it is people with great soft skills who emerge as team leaders. While technical skills help you stay on the team, if you lack soft skills, there is lesser possibility of you climbing the corporate ladder.

Organizations tend to assume that people know the importance of taking initiative, how to behave on the job, being punctual, friendly, diligent and reliable. However, on the contrary, these qualities need to be acquired through experience or training. Most graduate students lack work experience and subsequently, soft skills. To make up for the loss, they can opt for soft skills training. Opportunity, promotion and recognition cannot be achieved by hard skills alone. Organizations want someone who can contribute towards their success, not just another techie. For employers, knowledge of functional area is important but so is the ability to manage relationships and possession of strong team skills. Graduates should thus focus on soft skill development as well to be able to secure placements.

Most Valued Soft-Skills for Engineers
Teamwork, good communication skills and adaptability are the most valued soft skills for employers today. Most engineering projects today are large and complex and their success depends on the collaboration among large teams.  Engineers are required to be able to effectively communicate with other members of the team and work as part of a team. Because of the constantly evolving engineering industry, individuals need to be able to quickly adapt to unexpected changes at the workplace.

Engineers working for an organization are also expected to communicate with co-workers, other engineers and the senior management. To be able to effectively communicate through emails, reports, presentations and in meetings, engineers need great communication skills. They are often required to communicate with those who do not have a technical background and so, they should be able to simplify complex technical concepts for others to understand.

Thursday 4 June 2015

Talent Shortage in India…ManpowerGroup Identifies Opportunities for Jobseekers

Talent…where’s talent? According to the May, 2015 report by the international ManpowerGroup's 10th annual Talent Shortage Survey, 58% of Indian employers are facing talent crunch.

What this means is that talented individuals are in for kingly treatment!



The survey points out that more than half of Indian employers are facing difficulties in filling positions especially in the finance, accounting and IT sector.

This demand is expected to go higher up and the mobile technologies and analytics sector will see a similar talent crunch. Apart from these roles, other jobs that are seeing an increasing demand include legal, sales, communications, teachers, researchers, executives and engineers. The inability of Indian employers to find suitable candidates is negatively influencing their ability to serve clients. 



Other countries aren’t better off! Japan for instance is facing the highest talent shortage with 83% employers facing a talent crunch followed by Peru with 68% talent shortage. Other countries high on the list include Hong Kong, Brazil, Romani and Greece. India is at the 7th position globally. This shortage of talent means the labour market in these countries has lots of opportunities to offer for those who are well prepared and skilled.

Source: ManpowerGroup 2015 10th Annual Talent Shortage Survey


As a jobseeker, what can you do?

Jobseekers looking for opportunities can narrow their search on the top jobs that employers are finding it most hard to fill. Rather than simply focusing on skills, education and experience, you should also emphasize the soft-skills you possess. These include adaptability, flexibility and professionalism. According to the ManpowerGroup survey, these qualities are the ones employers are most struggling to find.

Check out the top ten hardest jobs employers are struggling to fill. You can consider these jobs to harness the opportunities!


Source: ManpowerGroup 2015 10th Annual Talent Shortage Survey 

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Job Market Looks Up: It’s Gonna Rain Jobs!

Sounds like any other alluring headline making a false promise? Well, if we are to go by The Economic Times report and the projections of the 2015 budget, then we do certainly have a positive job market in the making. 


Believe it or leave it, but it’s always best to be prepared. After all, when preparedness meets opportunity, you get…Lucky!



College graduates and non-graduates alike should work on their employability skills and also their theoretical-cum-practical knowledge to get placed successfully. The government is working towards enabling the entry of a larger workforce into the formal job sector. In the 2014 budget, the government’s focus was skill development and positive expectations for the job market were promoted through the Make-in-India campaign. However, with 94% of the workforce landing jobs in the informal sector without benefits and social security, the government was forced to modify its labor reforms in this year’s budget. Rituparna Chakraborty, president of the Indian Staffing Federation says that by implementing a new five-labor code system, it will be possible to channel more jobs in the formal sector.



Companies are geared up as always to hire the best talent. Sectors like aviation, auto and manufacturing that were experiencing a lull are now looking up as well. Policy reforms by the government are bound to attract foreign investments that will further boost the job market. Additional investments in infrastructure will bring in more jobs. The power sector will also see a surge in manpower demand and more and more technology firms will turn to contractual hiring. The government’s employment exchange initiatives will also be an added impetus to the growth of the job market. Employment exchanges in industrial clusters and educational institutions will facilitate an improved demand-supply match.



While the country’s job market is raring to, you need to ask yourself, are you prepared enough? Don’t just think, get prepared. Work on your domain skills, theoretical knowledge, industry knowledge, employ-ability skills and personality until the next job opportunity knocks your door!

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