Well to start with let me say that every student's career is a very special issue. Not mater what student counselors or parents discuss with the children, unfortunately many children end up not very satisfied with the discussions. I on my part is making a small contribution and sincerely hope that students reading this article will get some positive inputs from the article.

There have been a lot of changes since India started liberalisation since March 1991. In the last 10 years of changed economic environment, a lot of changes have taken place in the job market also. This article is addressed to teenagers planning their career, and not for businessmen looking for new markets, so I am going to focus on the new jobs in the 21st century. A lot of opportunities have arisen in the manufacturing, agro and other industries. But I limit the discussions to new opportunities in the IT service sector, and the new prospects of the conventional job opportunities in the IT sector.

It is difficult for many people to believe that service industry will be a major provider of jobs. One has to again look at it from the global angle. British Airways does its reservation - Back room operations from Bangalore. This is done simply to cut costs. We have a global advantage and before you and I know about it new avenues will come for exploiting it. So let us explore some new avenues of future growth.

A call center provides service and marketing support to American companies. Call centers operate in the night shift, when it is day time in the US. With the help of Internet and other telecommunication infrastructure, personnel in India answers calls from US regarding a company's products and services.

To take an example, An American Cell phone company may run a call center in Pune for its Cell Phone operations in New Jersey. As the call center is working in the night, (day at NJ) the professionals at the call center will answer calls related to cell phone enquiries, complaints and give all the concerned information.

The main requirement is that the professional working in the call center will have to not only understand the American accent but will also have to speak in the same accent to give a familiar feel to the customer. Many call centers are already operational in Pune, Noida , Banglaore and other Indian cities.

Medical Transcription is again on the lines of a call center but with a minor difference. Both employ the same concept that a lot can be achieved by making use of the time gap between India and the US. The steps in the MT business are explained below

1. A doctor practising in US, wants to make notes of his diagnosis as well as the treatment given to the patient, both for his personal as well as statutory needs. The doctor records his statements on the Multi media PC.

2. The doc sends all the multi - media files at the end of the day. (morning in India)

3. In the morning( in India) the Medical Transcriptionist will listen to the multimedia files and type all the doctor's report.

4. In the evening he will send the typed files by Internet, which the doctor will receive in the morning (NJ) In this way, the doctor saves on keeping a costly assistant as well as gets his documents ready next day morning.

But there are a few grey areas for the Medical Transcription business. Speech recognition technologies are now available, which might make the need of sending data redundant.

As all readers must be aware, a lot of information is available on the Internet. Many companies need to tap this information as per their needs. There is tremendous opportunity for professionals to browse the information and give the related information to the organistion. A job like this is very useful when tendering is On- Line. I have already seen some companies recruiting professionals for the post of Internet Analyst, and such jobs are only going to increase from now.

Advertisement is an integral part of every web site. But there is tremendous scope for ad professionals to come up with ads with newer and creative designs. As print and television media gets saturated, companies all over the world will increasingly use the Internet for their advertising needs.

Art will also go Digital. The internet will require its own artists. Artists who make cliparts and animation films too have a lot of opportunities. Infact an Internet Movie has already been planned. An internet artist has to not only have a flair for design the Digital art professional also has to understand technology issues namely

1. Bandwidth limitations

2. Using newer software’s

3. Importing / Exporting earlier works to newer software’s and increasing throughput

Not much needs to be said about this. Copy writing is a very lucrative profession in itself. As of today, main areas that are covered by copy writers are

1. Articles in Print media - newspapers, Magazines

2. Brochures

3. Advertising

The same is now required on the Internet, so you can imagine the scope for content designers on the Internet.

In the next week , we will cover the potential of the conventional jobs in IT sector namely Programming, QA, Testing and understand the scope for the same.

The author Mr. Sandeep Tapaswi, is Director Fands Infotrainers and can be reached at response@fandsindia.com