The hottest jobs these days are in the strangest of places. You would expect TCS, India’s largest IT software & services company, to be looking for software engineers. On its website, however, it lists the five hottest jobs on offer as: Japanese Language Translator & Interpreter, Italian Language Translator, Technical Communicator, Consultant (financial services) and Foreign Languages Faculty. This may not be an ordered list. But the fact that four of the five are essentially about verbal skills says a lot.

What is Google looking for in India? Among the many posts it wants to fill are an AdWords Representative in Hyderabad and a Creative Maximiser in Mumbai. “Look at TCS wanting so many language specialists,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “It is a sign of globalisation.” He says that, thanks to globalisation, you can use western data to extrapolate the jobs that will be hot in India too.

India itself has little by way of research into jobs that will be in demand. HR services provider Ma Foi has what it calls India’s first employment survey ? the Ma Foi Employment Survey. But that currently restricts itself to sectors. It says: “IT and ITES are back in the spotlight as the top hirers, displacing telecom to the third place. Print media & entertainment, pharma, transport & logistics, healthcare, textiles & garments, and the hospitality industry follow closely.”

Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc, the Chicago-based “original outplacement company”, has come out with a list of hot job opportunities. This includes Chief Privacy Officer (median annual salary $122,360), Actuary ($122,000), Business Continuity Director ($118,423), Wireless Infrastructure Manager ($100,000), etc.

A FastCompany list of top jobs for 2005-2009 (see box) is a little more elaborate and traditional. The US Bureau of Labour Statistics has another set of data. The fastest growing occupations up to the year 2014, it says, are home health aides, network systems & data communications analysts, medical assistants, dental hygienists, computer software engineers, dental assistants, etc. Notice that physical well-being related professions dominate. The point to note, says Singh, is that unlike in India these professions pay well in the US. “Anything that needs your physical presence ? you can’t outsource dentistry work to India ? will be in demand.”

The Bureau has another list of occupations that will show the largest job growth till 2014. These include retail salespersons, registered nurses, postsecondary teachers, janitors and cleaners, waiters and waitresses, orderlies, and attendants, and General & operations managers.

Unfortunately, many Indians consider some of these professions, like that of a janitor’s, demeaning. They would do well to remember that one of the founder-members of TiE (The IndUS Entrepreneurs), a collection of millionaire techies and venture capitalists, was no techie himself. He just cleaned up after them.

TOP JOBS

A FastCompany compilation of the top jobs for 2005-2009

• Personal finance adviser
• Medical scientist
• Computer software engineer
• Chiropractor
• Environmental engineer
• Biochemist and biophysicist
• Sales manager
• Epidemiologist
• Computer system analyst
• Management analyst
• Agent and business manager for artists, performers, and athletes
• Marketing manager
• Market research analyst
• Advertising manager
• Postsecondary education administrator
• Financial manager
• Actuary
• Medical services manager

Source: www.fastcompany.com