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For job-seekers, 2011 will likely be a year of opportunities as Indian companies ramp up
hiring to sustain their rapid growth.

In sheer numbers of new hires, the largest employers are likely to be the usual suspects:
information technology companies and financial services firms. But job-seekers will find
plenty of opportunities in companies from other sectors as well. Here are five industries they
should consider:

   

 As India continues to build more homes and offices and
the government continues to invest in infrastructure projects like roads and bridges, job
openings in this sector are expected to grow.

³There¶s a short supply of project management expertise and technical expertise´ in the
construction and real einstate sectors, says Nishchae Suri, managing director of consulting
firm Mercer in India.

While infrastructure companies need more engineers and team leaders, real-estate companies
are also looking for architects, interior designers and business development people. To sell
their properties, home builders ³will need a sophisticated sales and marketing team,´ says
Shiv Agrawal, chief executive officer of recruitment firm ABC Consultants Pvt.

  India is going through an education boom as new schools, colleges,

universities, management institutes and online learning centers are launched on a regular
basis. Foreign universities are also increasingly eyeing India. Yale University President
Richard C. Levin, for instance, recently said he hoped Yale would grow ties with India.

All this will translate into higher demand for employees ³There¶s a dearth of good teachers
and good faculty,´ says Mr. Suri.

There will also be more demand for non-teaching staff, including administrative employees,
managers for the various institutes and sales personnel.

Recruiters say a large portion of job growth is likely to come from the increasing number of
institutes for vocational training. These institutes have been growing in popularity and
produce ready-to-hire employees, such as in the hospitality sector.

 
 Top Indian drug-manufacturers are setting up new business units in
India and abroad as part of their broader expansion plans.

Mumbai-based Lupin Ltd., for instance, is hiring for its compliance teams to meet
requirements of regulators in some foreign countries in which it operates. Compliance teams
ensure that a company¶s products and processes are meeting various rules and regulations.
³These functions are getting beefed up substantially because the footprint is«global,´ says
Divakar Kaza, president, human resources at Lupin.
Mr. Kaza says they typically hire from outside for mid-level positions, such as for new
businesses or job functions in which they don¶t have in-house expertise. This includes
compliance.

Other jobs available to outsiders currently include positions in quality management, in sales
and in research and development units. Most of these require individuals with less than three
years of experience, says Mr. Kaza.

:  : This is a broad category which includes car makers, engineering
companies and manufacturers of household appliances, such as washing machines and
fridges.

Though the growth in manufacturing output slowed down in November, the larger
companies are still hiring.

In a survey conducted by Manpower Inc. last year, manufacturing companies were found to
be among the most optimistic about new hires in the first three months of 2011, second only
to the IT industry.

A bulk of the jobs in this category are at entry and middle-management levels. Namr Kishore,
head of sales and marketing at Manpower Services India Pvt., says recruiters in these
companies are looking both for people with technical skills ± like scientists and engineers ±
as well as for those with more generic office skills, like accounting.

!
 Growing consumerism in India has helped boost retail sales. Many of these
companies are investing to expand in 2011. Newcomers are expected too.

³Retail growth has actually picked up«in the last three to four months,´ says Mr. Agrawal of
ABC Consulting.

Besides looking to fill up a large number of entry-level jobs, the retail sector will also need
more store and project managers. As large retailers set up chain stores, they¶ll need ³someone
to run around, get the property and put the store together,´ says Mr. Agrawal. These jobs
would typically require six to 10 years of experience, he adds.


Indigo Case:

Indi-who?

It isn't a brand known outside of India, but IndiGo Airlines just put itself on the map by
signing a nearly $16 billion order for 180 Airbus A320 jets. Airbus says this is the biggest
order ever, by number of aircraft. Even more astonishing is that it comes on top of an
outstanding 2006 order for 100 planes. Only 32 of those have been delivered so far.

Privately held IndiGo is readying itself for a change in the way Indians travel. Already, 47
million people flew domestically in India between January and November of last year, nearly
thrice the number in 2004. This is expected to grow more than ninefold in the next decade,
the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation predicts.

IndiGo's ambition is to grab a large share of this. So far it is succeeding by offering no-frills
flights that save a lot of time and don't cost substantially more than train tickets. It charges for
meals and uses the journey to sell everything from perfumes to watches.

This is working well, in part because IndiGo was launched with a low-cost model in mind. It
uses a single type of aircraft that cuts maintenance and training costs, for example. Some
rivals, on the other hand, have only recently decided to compete for low-cost business. By
November, IndiGo was India's third-busiest airline with nearly 18% of the market by number
of passengers carried within the country. This is up from less than 12% of the market in 2008.

And the company's president, Aditya Ghosh, says it has been profitable since the year ending
March 2009, only three years after starting operations. In the year through March 2010, the
company earned $107 million. By comparison, Kingfisher Airlines, which started operations
at the same time as IndiGo, but as a premium carrier, has yet to make a profit.

The new aircraft will also help IndiGo expand overseas. It could get permission for
international routes in August, when it completes a mandatory five years of domestic
operations, the president says. The new jets are ideal for short-haul flights to the Middle East
and Southeast Asia²important destinations for India's expatriate workers and
holidaymakers.

Some challenges await. The new aircraft will be delivered from 2016 to 2025, but IndiGo
admits it hasn't nailed down a plan to finance these purchases. India's banks are already
heavily exposed to some of IndiGo's loss-making rivals, so they may be wary of lending
heavily to another carrier.

But for IndiGo, this isn't a flight of fancy.

Corporate Entrepreneurship:

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In 1917, Bertie Charles Forbes compiled a list of 100 biggest companies in America. This list
came to be known as ³Forbes 100.´ By 1987, 61 of these companies had ceased to exist and
out of the rest 39, only 18 managed to stay in the top 100.

The demise of more than 60% of the biggest companies in a matter of 70 years shows how
vulnerable companies are to business challenges. The shift in focus from innovation to
management and control processes puts innovation and new ideas on the back seat, giving an
opportunity for new players to compete successfully.

Which is why even the most established companies need to foster corporate entrepreneurship,
also known by the buzzword ³intrapreneurship???´ Continuous innovation helps a company
to not only mitigate the challenges thrown up by the business environment but also to make
the best use of new opportunities. This goes a long way in keeping the organization ahead of
its competition and also keeps it fit to fight new entrants.

But innovation is not a one-off phenomenon; rather, it¶s a continuously evolving process and
needs a favourable environment to initiate and prosper. To turn internal-entrepreneurship into
an advantage over the competition, an organization should create an environment for
employees to come up with new ideas, help them in nurturing these ideas and reward them
suitably for success. The continuous discovery of new and improved ways and means of
doing business helps keep the company up to date and ahead of the competition. Many
successful business initiatives have been started by entrepreneur-employees inside
established businesses.

The corporate entrepreneur or intrapreneur differs from an individual entrepreneur because he

works in the confines of a parent organization. There are both advantages and disadvantages
to this. He has the advantage of easy access to facilities and sponsors but also has to work in
coordination with an existing framework. He has to convince people around him, get
approvals and request deviations. He has the advantage of getting mentoring from his seniors
but also can face the disadvantage of colleagues and seniors who can become a hindrance in
the execution of his plans.

Nurturing corporate entrepreneurship calls for very careful management of various factors
influencing the environment around the new ventures and initiatives. Below are a few
important factors to consider:

- Insight and foresight: Company leadership needs to have an insight into the existing
capabilities of the organization and also have the foresight of where it aspires to be in future.
To make intrapreneurship an advantage over the competition, the organization must identify
the needs of ³tomorrow¶s customers´ or ³tomorrow¶s needs of current customers.´ The gap
between the company¶s current abilities and future offerings open a window of opportunity
window for nurturing entrepreneurial ventures within the organization.

- Commitment: The most important factor for fostering intrapreneurship in an organization is

commitment from the sponsors, the intrapreneur and his team. Access to capital, approvals,
deviation from the current rules and collaboration with other teams in the organization all
need firm support from on highs. Usually when such an initiative is started, team members
have to work extra hours and beyond the specified job requirements, thus requiring a firm
commitment from the employee and his team. New initiatives bring change in the status quo
of a business. It is natural for the organization to resist change; sponsors need to have the
commitment and courage to bring about a change in the culture of the organization.

- Reward new thoughts: The best way to encourage entrepreneurial employees is to reward
them for success, however small that success may be. One major misconception is that
employees look for money as reward but money is not the only reward that these employees
are looking for. They aspire for recognition, promotion and increased autonomy. The
sponsors should be tolerant of failure. They should reward successful initiatives but should
never penalize the failures. Punishment suppresses creativity and innovation.

- Keep learning: Faster learning is a good substitute for better planning. Even if an
organization is capable of delivering, external factors might change. These factors can be
very dynamic and change from day to day. So, it is better to drive the initiative by vision and
not be too fixed to the original plan. Seek feedback, keep learning from day-to-day incidents
and tweak the plans accordingly.

- Learn and restart: Not all the initiatives started by an organization succeed. Even the biggest
organizations and the best leaders have had bad falls. The organization should not consider a
failure as a setback. Commitment and mentoring can reduce the rate of failure. The lessons
from a failed initiative should be analyzed, retained and remembered. Having done that, start
again.

Ideas, innovation and new ventures are among the hot discussion topics in the post-recession
business world. Many proponents of entrepreneurship have the view that recession is the best
time to plan and postrecession the best time to launch new ventures. These are the times
when employees are bubbling with ideas. Rather than focusing on cost cutting and scaling
down operations, companies need to identify these entrepreneurial employees, let them
search for opportunities and give them a proper environment to flourish. And who knows:
One of these ideas may propel your organization to the next level.