I recently wrote an article on the Retail sector in India and the employment opportunities it provides. Here's the link to the original article on ET Retail.
Few months ago, a small paanstall mysteriously appeared on the footpath near our office. I saw a young man at the helm, selling paan, cigarettes, chewing gum and some toffees. As I walked by his stall in the evenings, I occasionally bought a packet of chewing gum to encourage his endeavour. In a short time, I found that he didn't need much encouragement from me. I saw the number of people visiting his stall grow and now he has packets of popular namkeen and chips, cold drinks and mineral water. In just a few months, I saw his stall growing significantly to cater to the office crowd in the area. He still smiles at me and offers me free chewing gum to show his gratitude for encouraging him in his early days.
This young man's journey is also the story of Indian Retail Sector which over the last decade or so has gone through a major transformation. Shedding the initial fears of large corporations displacing small shops, there is now a noticeable shift towards organized retailing. Suddenly you notice malls in every nook and corner, displaying large billboards and proudly lit up at night. Indian brands compete unabashedly with their multi-national counterparts. The un-organized retail has also stepped up, with even the small time kirana stores modernizing themselves in terms of display and operations to keep pace with the growing demands of the customers.
Today, the retail sector accounts for about 22% of India's GDP. According to a recent KPMG report on Indian retail, the overall size of the industry is estimated to be $534 billion in 2013-14 with a CAGR of 15% over last five years. Going forward, the overall retail sector growth is likely to witness a CAGR of 12-13 %, which would be worth $948 billion in 2018-19.
A number of factors have influenced this dramatic growth. Growing youth population, nuclear families in urban areas, a growing middle class with rising incomes and the resulting purchasing power, and higher brand consciousness have driven the demand for retailing. Opening up of FDI has created conducive regulatory environment for the sector. This coupled with rapid real estate infrastructure development, better efficiency in supply-chain, R&D, innovation and new product development has fueled the supply side.
All this translates to the many opportunities for the youth in the country. As per a report by NSDC, India will need around 56 million strong work-force for the booming retail sector. The sector will have one of the highest incremental human resource requirement of 17.35 million by 2022, offering opportunities in sales, merchandising, store management, central management and procurement.
For the youth to avail the upcoming opportunities and pursue a promising career in retail industry, it is important they equip themselves with the right training as different lines of retail business require distinct skill-sets. Some skills and interests that one must have before joining the retail industry are:
Enjoy working with people
Enjoy constant customer interaction
An enthusiastic, flexible and positive attitude
Ability to step in another person's shoes
Empathy and understanding towards a distressed customer
Formal education is not as essential in the retail industry as it is in other areas of marketing. Many senior executives in this industry are people who were hired as retail staff. Their sincerity, hard work, enthusiasm, speed and experience,and an unwavering customer-centric focus resulted in their growth. So with the right attitude, one can easily hope to make it big in the retail industry. Typically, one can enter the retail industry as a class Xth or X11th pass out and with the right attitude and training, over a period of time,can advance to specialized jobs or management positions that offer higher remuneration.
Major proportion of the employment in the retail sector is in front-end/retail assistant profiles in stores. Store operations account for 75%-80% of the total manpower employed in the organized retail sector. Although the skill requirements may seem similar across segments, the type of product retailed, format of the store and customer involvement impacts the intensity of skill requirement across various functions. Soft skills such as communication and interpersonal skills are the key criterion for employability for both the entry-level and middle-level jobs at the retail store.
Retail industry in India has the potential to provide employment to a large number of youth. The latest announcement by the government to allow 100% FDI in retail (e-commerce, wholesale and in the marketing of food products) has already indicated a surge in employment opportunities in this sector. A direct result of FDI would be increase in the number as well as the formats of retail, which would result in the generation of jobs in multiple categories. This development brings with it an unprecedented need for nation-wide availability of skilled labour and an increased demand for comprehensive skills training.
I recently became a little active on Quora. I came across a question there that caught my attention.
"As a decision-maker, when did you hire an introvert over an extrovert? Did you find them more productive or less?"
I think it depends on the role you are hiring for. I have seen that when hiring for an individual contributor role, I might be okay to select introverts. I might even consider introverts for roles like testing, editing, proof reading etc.
I am more likely to select an extrovert for leadership roles, sales roles and roles that require a huge amount of teamwork.
In a recent post, RWW reports that “In a study of 300 hiring managers and
recruiters, Palo Alto-based social networking monitoring service Reppler
reports that 76% of hiring managers look at applicants' Facebook profiles. An
additional 56% are looking at Twitter, and 48% check out LinkedIn.”
The fact that recruiters should be checking out basic info
on social networks makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem
true, at least for Indian recruiters. I recently got a call from a recruiter,
apparently someone involved in senior level recruitment in a reputed
recruitment firm in India. So this guy starts with introducing himself and how
he is specifically focused on senior level recruitment and how they carefully handpick
the candidates for select senior level jobs. He goes on to say that he got my
reference through someone (he wouldn’t reveal his ‘source’).
After the pleasantries, he asks me about my career background.
I said my career profile is listed on LinkedIn and asked him if he had checked
that before calling me.
Oh we don’t check LinkedIn profiles, we are required identify
candidates from independent sources, he says to my surprise.
Sure, that’s okay but having identified me from independent
sources, why haven’t you checked my public profile before calling me?
Oh no, we aren’t supposed to do that.
Duh!!!!!!!!
Why don’t the recruiters realize that they are wasting the
candidate’s and their own time by not reviewing the profile on social networking
sites? Surely they will be able to find a better job-candidate match by
reviewing the profile before they approach the candidates.
In a recent employee survey by Mercer it was found that one in two employee is seriously considering leaving their jobs for better opportunities in terms of career and base pay. Interestingly around 66% of employees under age 24 are seriously considering leaving. It leads to an interesting question that I have been pondering over and researching informally:
Is changing jobs the best way to get a raise?
After say more than 15 years work experience, do you think someone who has hopped jobs more regularly will be paid more than someone who has spent longer in each job? While I haven't done any serious research, however based on the senior level profiles I come across, I haven't yet found substantial evidence of job hoping really making a significant impact on the ability to get more pay in the long run. I haven't particularly found people with more job changes at higher salary levels than the ones who might have stayed in organizations longer.
It would be interesting to have a survey for people with say more than 15 years of work experience. Would love to hear your observations on this. Do take the time to respond below.
@sidin posed a question on Twitter about lies we give while quitting a job. I am sure there’s a full article out with a lot more research.
Over the years, I have heard many reasons that people give while quitting. These reasons are not necessarily lies in all cases. These are just a collection of some reasons that I figured were lies after the person had left the organization.
"I want to do something different" (when the will continue in the same industry doing the same thing)
"I am getting a better role" (when they will do exactly what they were earlier doing)
"I am getting a better designation" (when they aren't)
"I want to take a break" (and they promptly join another company)
"I have to go to my hometown because my parents are old/unwell" (and they promptly join another company in the same city)
"My spouse is getting transferred" (and I find either the spouse to be in the same city, or they have joined another company in the same city)
"I am joining a full time course" (and they promptly join another company)
“I have to join my family business” (and they promptly join another company)
What are some of the lies you have heard or have given while quitting an organization?
Someone asked a question on the career growth paths for trainers on one of our internal forums. And about the same time I came across this interesting blog post which talks about not worrying about career path and living your career story, written by Jason Seiden. It is from Dan McCarthy’s list of 20 Best Leadership Blog Posts of 2010. Just loved the way Jason explains the need to dump career paths and focus on building your career stories.
So, what could be a Trainer's career stories? While it is really for each one to decide for themselves, I can imagine some of them going like these:
A trainer could become a better trainer. This seems to be least favorite path of trainers but is the most crucial and can take trainers to the peak. It is also the hardest in my view. By becoming better trainers I mean really be known in the industry. Build your social network and stay in touch with your students. Continue providing them assistance post training. Be less of 'sage on stage' and more of a 'coach by the side'. Start a blog and write a book on your subject or on how to become a better trainer. Understand how people learn and create training practices that help people learn faster. Do research on the subject of training and learning. If you are in the training business, there is a great scope for better trainers who go beyond training in a class and help build learning solutions, who can do research and appropriately adapt their training strategies, or even create new ones, who can create new standards in the training industry.
Depending on the acumen towards operations, people management and business, trainers could move to roles like managing training, handling projects and other ops roles. Trainers could even take on sales/business roles. They could move to manage training centers, area, territory, region, zone, country. Many senior people in our organizations have been trainers at some point of their careers. All training businesses need people with good ops, sales and business management skills and acumen.
Trainers could become Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for content development projects. Trainers could even start writing content, depending on the skill and interest. Trainers could become full-fledged content developers. And from there ID specialists, or take the other path of project management. From either path, trainers could move to taking on business or sales roles.
There's no dearth of career growth paths and I am sure there are many more than what I have listed above. What's really important is to figure out what's the career story we want to create for ourselves.
Sanjay is a great team leader aspiring to be a manager. He has shown good results in the projects he has handled. He has shown willingness to go the extra mile in the tasks assigned. He has been constantly told he is a great performer and the company would not like to lose a great team leader. Regular feedback and company awards have made him proud and self confident. However he has had some issues in his ability to handle larger projects and teams. His view of the industry is relatively narrow. His view of a manager’s role is limited and his attitude is bordering towards arrogance and over confidence. He is closed to any feedback about his limitations and refuses to accept inputs to improve his abilities to become a good manager. He will not get the manager’s position that he is aspiring for. He has thrown tantrums that he will start looking for another job that gives him the promotion that he believes he deserves.
Would you simply wait for him to quit his job, paying him while he finds another job? Or would you fire your best performer who is great at the current role but not ready for the next role? Or would you give in to the tantrums and promote him even though he is not ready for the role?
With the job market opening up and companies vying for talent, I foresee a repeat of what was happening couple of years ago. Given the paucity of talent people were promoted to roles they just weren’t ready for. Do you think this will happen again?
It’s been a slow start to the 2010 Unofficial Salary Survey of eLearning, Content Development and Training jobs. You can now view the responses by following the Responses link.
Some highlights so far:
Functions that have participated are Instructional Designers (33%) and Technology/Programmers (22%), followed by Project management (17%) and Graphics and Media (11%).
Most participants have 10 years work experience (28%) followed by 5 and 3 years (11% each).
So far the survey seems to be dominated by male responders (72%).
Only 28% people switched jobs last year.
Mostly people from elearning/training vendors have participated (72%).
City spread is fairly even with nearly equal participation from NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. Surprisingly, Bangalore has had low participation so far.
Some changes I had introduced in this year’s survey were:
Number of years of experience is more specific rather than a range.
Salary details are now a number instead of a range. This will help get better inputs about salaries.
Gender info can help to see if there is any gender inequality in salaries.
Industry info can help identify salaries in different industries.
The survey can be useful only if more people participate. Do spread the word around.
There's nothing official about this survey. The survey is not based on responses by companies but based on responses provided by you, the employee. This survey is not associated with any organization. The survey is anonymous.
This survey is for you if you are an Instructional Designer, Content Developer, Technical Writer, Project Manager, Graphics designer, Flash Programmer, Content Integrator, Tester, Editor, Trainer, Training administrator, SME, or any other role involved in elearning, content development and training delivery.
Click Unofficial eLearning Salary Survey of India 2010 to participate in the survey. I will publish the findings on my blog here sometime in August/September 2010. This year’s questionnaire attempts to find out more about you and the industry to provide a more in-depth analysis.
Help derive maximum benefit from this survey: spread the word about this survey. Email, Tweet, Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and Blog about this page for your friends and colleagues.
It’s time to launch the 2010 Unofficial Salary Survey for elearning, content development and training jobs in India. There's nothing official about this survey. The survey is not based on responses by companies but based on responses provided by you, the employee. This survey is not associated with any organization. The survey is anonymous.
This survey is for you if you are an Instructional Designer, Content Developer, Technical Writer, Project Manager, Graphics designer, Flash Programmer, Content Integrator, Tester, Editor, Trainer, Training administrator, SME, or any other role involved in elearning, content development and training delivery.
Click Unofficial eLearning Salary Survey of India 2010 to participate in the survey. I will publish the findings on my blog here sometime in August/September 2010. This year’s questionnaire attempts to find out more about you and the industry to provide a more in-depth analysis.
Help derive maximum benefit from this survey: spread the word about this survey. Email, Tweet, Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and Blog about this page for your friends and colleagues.
I came across Dan McCarthy’s blog recently. Dan is a practitioner in the field of leadership development for over 20 years and is currently the Manager of Leadership and Management Development at a Fortune "Great Place to Work", "Training Top 125", and "High Impact Learning" (HILO 80) company. He has a great blog on leadership that I would encourage you to subscribe to.
Dan wrote a great post Head’s Up – You are About to be Promoted or Fired where he shares why you might get promoted or fired. I think there’s also a third script: the status quo script. While you may not be fired for things you do (or don’t do), you may not get promoted either. Here’s what the script might be why you are not getting promoted:
Status Quo script:
I have some good news - you are keeping your job. Unfortunately we aren’t promoting you. Here’s why:
You are not seen as a leader amongst your peers. You do your job well enough. However you don’t inspire others, either within your team or amongst your peers. People respect you for doing your job with the best intentions and spirit but don’t really look up to you for taking them to the next level.
You don’t take initiatives. If there is a new opportunity, you don’t volunteer. You don’t seem to have new ideas. You usually wait to be assigned tasks and you are happy to do what is assigned to you, which you do well, no doubt. Perhaps you are content and satisfied with your current role.
You are not adding value to your current role. For example, your role is not just to create and present the report, but also work towards improving what you are presenting.
You are not visible. You don’t participate in company initiatives. You avoid official social gatherings. You don’t participate in cross functional teams. You shy away from taking credit for the good work you or your team does. You rarely share what you know, people don’t really see you as a node of reference.
You resist change. If there is talk of changing process or tools, you resist it. Your first reaction to initiatives is that it can't be done. It is too hard to convince you about the new ideas or changes and too much time needs to be spent with you to onboard you. People see you as an impediment to new ideas.
Are you complaining too much about your job? Wondering what your dream job is? It might be a better idea to stop complaining before it is too late. Would you like to lose this job?
Swaminathan Moothy of Society for Technical Communication (STC) invited me to speak at their regional conference in Chennai. I shared what I think is needed to be a successful writer. I spoke about skills companies are looking for in a technical writer, tips on how to manage technical writing projects, and career options for a technical writer. It was quite a learning experience. The audience was a group of technical writers with varied experience and I got to learn new things. Here’s my presentation on being a successful technical writer.
Amit Garg of Upside Learning posted some interesting comments about the elearning salary survey on their company blog. He raises three important points:
Salary ranges are very wide
Does variable pay work?
Recession has had a severe impact
You can see his full post here. Here’s what I responded.
1. Salary Ranges: In the survey, I asked respondents for total experience and relevant experience. As I mentioned in my post, I have considered relevant experience and this has led to some anomaly in data. However when I dig a little deeper into the data, there is indeed a very wide salary range for instructional designers. So while one person with total experience of 12-15 years gets between 3.5 and 5 lac, another person with similar total experience is in the range of 8-10 lac. One is at Manager level, which the other has listed himself/herself as instructional designer. Perhaps I need to include not just the function but also the level in the organization. Useful input for the next survey.
It is a little hard to conclude whether educational background impacted salary. Looking at the data, I personally felt that having more than just a bachelor’s degree led to higher salary but one could argue that data sample is not large enough to draw that conclusion.
2. Variable Pay: Different companies and individuals treat this differently. From my personal experience of having spoken with many people from different organizations, variable pay for junior levels is usually linked to either company performance or used more as a retention strategy (it is in most cases not paid monthly). When times are good, almost everyone gets the variable pay and when times are not good, companies have the flexibility of controlling their costs. Other than sales functions or senior level functions, I haven’t seen anyone “aggressively going after” the variable pay component.
3. Impact of recession: You are right, most people who had an increase of more than 10% were in lower salary range. However there were some in the higher salary range who listed their increases as more than 15%. These were in Project Management and Graphics/Media function. I am not sure if the increase was in the same job or did they switch jobs during the year. Another input for next survey I guess.
The sample size of respondents is still too small to draw any serious conclusions. However considering that I haven’t yet been able to find any other survey that focuses on elearning and content development salaries, I guess this will have to do for now.
I recently discovered how I can effectively use LinkedIn to find potential candidates for recruitment. I simply update my status message with what I am looking for and get responses from interested candidates. Okay, I know this isn’t really new but hey, it’s new for me. Anyway this post isn’t about this discovery of mine.
I received a few responses to my status updates. These were from people I know and have worked with in the past. Unfortunately, a few of the people who responded did not have an updated LinkedIn profile. Their profile simply listed the jobs they held but had not details about what they did in each job or their achievements. Since I knew these people personally, I had a good idea of their profiles and the jobs they have held since they moved on. However I possibly couldn’t forward their profiles to my other colleagues because of their incomplete profiles. Lost opportunity!
I recommend that you update your LinkedIn profile with details of what you did in each job you held. Include your achievements too. Consider LinkedIn profile your updated and most recent résumé, even if you are not actively looking for a job. And do remember to write a Summary and Specialities too.
If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, simply add me to your network. On my LinkedIn profile, click Add Manish to Your Network, select Other and put in my email manishmo [at] hotmail [dot] com. Please do provide some introduction about yourself in your initial connecting message.
I recently came across a question posted on the eCube LinkedIn forum that I responded to. While the question was how a person in between jobs could keep their instructional design skills up to date, I think it is important even for those with the jobs to keep their skills up to date.
How can an experienced Instructional Designer with very limited experience in current instructional design software tools update their skills in order to be recognized and considered as a candidate for e-Learning positions? How does a person in transition keep their instructional design skills up to date in order to effectively compete for instructional design jobs in today's job market?
Start reading a lot of blogs by other experts and connect with other learning professionals through your comments. It is always hard to know which blogs to follow. Here are the blogs that I follow, or you could also browse through the blogroll on this site.
Twitter is another great tool for connecting with others. This will give you an insight into what's happening in the industry and help you stay up to date.
If you are up to it (and I strongly recommend that you do make an effort), my advice would be to start writing a blog to articulate your learning. Your blog will be a useful showcase in your job interviews (I am of course assuming that you will write about learning/instructional design).
I would also recommend that you learn various tools used in elearning. These tools are usually easy enough to get started and learn on your own. You could easily work with the demo versions of the latest tools and to get your hands dirty.
And if you are indeed in between jobs and want to stay up to date, I would advice you to start picking up small freelance assignments. No better way to stay in touch with what's happening in the industry by actually being hands on.
So far, Chennai and Pune are leading with most participants, with Bangalore and NCR following closely. Hyderabad and Mumbai are the other two cities that have participated.
Most participants are Instructional designers (55%), followed by Project management (19%) and Technology/programming (15%) functions.
This year 24% had no change in their fixed salary over last year, while 40% had an increase of less than 10%. Nearly 4% had a decrease in their fixed salary over last year.
Most (72%) instructional designers with 2-4 years experience have fixed salary in the wide range of 2.5 lac to 5 lac. Nearly 55% of IDs with 4-6 years experience are also paid in the same range. The salary range is quite wide for other roles too.
Almost everyone with more than 8 years work experience has variable compensation in addition to their fixed salary, while about a third of people with less than 6 years have a variable compensation component. Nearly 60% of project managers with less than 8 years experience have variable compensation component. Graphics/Media folks seem to be the only ones without any variable compensation so far (of the very small number that have participated). 67% of people in companies with more than 1000 people have variable compensation, while this is only 36% for companies with less than 1000 employees.
Watch this space for more detailed analysis sometime next month. Have a suggestion of what you want to see in the analysis? Leave a comment on this post.
There's nothing official about this survey. The survey is not based on responses by companies but based on responses provided by you, the employee. This survey is not associated with any organization. The survey is anonymous.
This survey is for you if you are an Instructional Designer, Project Manager, Graphics designer, Flash Programmer, Tester, Editor, Trainer, SME, or any other role involved in developing elearning or any other form of training content.
Update: Survey is closed for the year. You can view the elearning and content development salaries in India for 2009 here.
Launching the Unofficial Salary Survey for eLearning / Content Development Jobs in India for year 2009. There's nothing official about this survey. The survey is not based on responses by companies but based on responses provided by you, the employee. This survey is not associated with any organization. The survey is anonymous.
This survey is for you if you are an Instructional Designer, Content Developer, Tech Writer, Project Manager, Graphics designer, Flash Programmer, Tester, Editor, Trainer, SME, or any other role involved in developing elearning or any other form of training content. This year I also attempt to find out how the economic conditions have impacted the salary hikes this year.
So Ben Southall bagged the best job in the world, the dream job of Tourism Queensland.He gets a six-month, live-in contract to promote the Great Barrier Reef, and get paid $100K. This got me thinking what my dream job might be. Here are a few my dream jobs.
Consultant, Advisor... I can tell you what to do; just don't ask me to do it. And pay me top dollar for it too.
Mentor, Coach (corporate kinds)... I would love to share my knowledge and experience. Fortunately I get to do this a lot in my current job, so I am pretty much close to doing what I really like.
Teacher (academic kinds)... Become a professor in a management school, new batch of students each year, lots of time to research and experiment. Unfortunately schools require me to have fancy degrees before they would even consider me as a professor.
Writer... full time that is, not just writing a blog, and not just work stuff either. If only I can figure out how it will pay for my mortgages.
Producer, Director... of a full fledged Bollywood movie. Heck who wants the critics awards… I want the whole nine yards to produce and direct a Bollywood movie. I just need to find a close relative in the likes of Karan Johar to get started.
The notion that people quit their bosses and not their jobs is probably different for Gen X and Gen Y. Gen X is more likely to stick to a good boss even if they don’t like the job. Gen Y is likely to quit the job even if they like the boss. I read in an India employment report (that I am trying to get my hands on to) that Gen Y-ers’ average stint in a company is about 2 years. Based on my experiences, this is quite true.
Welcome to Learn and Lead. I write about learning, leadership, performance, management, elearning, training, blogging, tools, trends. Looking forward to your valuable comments.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by my employers and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of my employers.
Few months ago, a small paanstall mysteriously appeared on the footpath near our office. I saw a young man at the helm, selling paan, cigarettes, chewing gum and some toffees. As I walked by his stall in the evenings, I occasionally bought a packet of chewing gum to encourage his endeavour. In a short time, I found that he didn't need much encouragement from me. I saw the number of people visiting his stall grow and now he has packets of popular namkeen and chips, cold drinks and mineral water. In just a few months, I saw his stall growing significantly to cater to the office crowd in the area. He still smiles at me and offers me free chewing gum to show his gratitude for encouraging him in his early days.
