Job Opportunities in Emerging Sectors- A Study

ASSOCHAM Business Barometer (ABB) has found that the Indian economy growing at a brisk pace of over 9 per cent has thrown opportunities in a vast array of disciplines like retail, aviation, hospitality, entertainment and brokerages.

The ABB Study on “Job Opportunities in Emerging Sectors” revealed that a wide information gap exists for the students aspiring for rewarding careers, which await them not only in the much sought after IT and Management but also in numerous emerging areas.

The growth in economy is being led by the services sector as also the manufacturing sector which grew by 11 per cent and 12.3 per cent respectively.

IT-ITES sector, the biggest employment generator, having hired a work force of about 1.63 million by March 2007 would continue to hire most aggressively. With the quest of global competitiveness gathering tremendous momentum, a whole gamut of opportunities is coming youths’ way. Apart from the highly skilled engineering jobs, BPOs, KPOs and more recently Legal Process Outsourcing (LPOs) have been offering a variety of jobs requiring different levels of skills. The IT-ITES industry is expected to fall short of 5,000,000 technology professionals by 2010, our estimates suggest.

Job Opportunities in Emerging Sectors by 2010
Sector      No. of Jobs
Retail      2,000,000
KPOs      250,000
BPOs      2,300,000
Hospitality      94,000

BPO, a 9.5 billion dollar industry, is likely to employ close to 2,300,000 people by 2010. Owing to the soaring property prices in big cities, rising wages coupled with talent shortage and high attrition rates, the BPO players are beginning to move their operations to tier II and tier III cities. Thus, a number of openings would come up in cities like Pune, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh etc.

According to the study, the global companies are increasing their presence in the knowledge processing after the BPO success in India. Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) which is a USD 3 billion industry, may scale up to reach USD 10-12 billion by 2010. After BPOs, KPOs (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) are emerging as a lucrative job destination for the youth.

KPOs which require high end skills and intellectual attributes would throw job opportunities in the higher pay scale category. The players in the sector are looking to hire professionals for financial analysis, equity research, treasury operations, credit decision processes and accruals services among others. The segment is set to create 250,000 jobs by 2010, hiring workforce from a range of backgrounds from science, engineering, law, accounting, pharmaceuticals to technological streams.

LPO, though at a nascent stage, is expected to grow fast due to a significant cost advantage in India. It would generate about 79,000 jobs by 2015. At present the processes being outsourced to India include patent application drafting, legal research, pre-litigation documentation, advising clients, analyzing drafted documents, writing software licensing agreements and drafting distribution agreement.

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