Jorawer S., Chandigarh, August 5, 2009:

Independent India’s first planned city, Chandigarh is unique in several ways. Nestled at the foot of the Shivaliks, and 248 kms away from New Delhi, Chandigarh is a Union Territory and capital to the state administrations of Punjab and Haryana.

Not a long ago, Chandigarh was called a city of attired and retired, more like a city for the old who wish to have quality life after retirement. Even institutes like HUDA promoted this concept and sold large number of plots in Panchkula to the defense officers as a place to settle upon retirement.

Career opportunities in Chandigarh have always been there but type of jobs and industry kept changing. New born Chandigarh was flush with career opportunities at all levels from class IV, peon, mali, watchman, driver to Superintendents, Directors etc to run the government offices.

Those who came up with Law degrees started their career at High Court and some of them eventually reached up to the level of Chief Justice of India. Law-clerk or Munshi was also a sought after commodity. In short, every body who had attended high school has always got an employment in one way or the another at Chandigarh.These “babus” at Chandigarh encouraged their children to sit for Bank Probationary Officer’s Job. Subsequently, Chandigarh Industrial Area offered opportunities in private sector too. A TV factory, Needle Factory, Steel Factory & Ordinance Cable Factory offered employment opportunities to all those not so lucky to be in coveted Government jobs.

Then came a wave of electronics industry. BEL in Panchkula, SCL in Mohali started attracting people towards engineering industry. Punjab Communications, Punjab Wireless, Fujitsu, ESPL, NODE to name a few, created beautiful career options and these remained the first preference of BE (Electronics) toppers for many years. Industrial areas in Derabassi and Ropar offered jobs to textile, mechanical, chemical engineers alike.

Next boom came with coming of IT software and enabled services. The most sought after remained Quark & IDS Infotech. Thanks to BPO pressure on NCR region, Chandigarh emerged as a good destination, with advantages of being just 4-6 hours away by rail and road. The Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park RGCTP conceived in 2001 by the Chandigarh Administration, invited IT industry to set up houses in its 123 acres facility, the first phase had Infosys Technologies anchoring the project on 30 acres with a state-of the art campus. Phase II will have Wipro playing the anchor’s role with facilities on a 30 acre campus too. An Entrepreneurs Development Centre within the campus is for start-up ventures to generate further employment opportunities.

With the Private Telecom companies started making Mohali as a hub to service the Punjab Circle, the tertiary sector jobs or service sector jobs also are today available in abundance at Chandigarh. Opportunities multiplied with Baddi in Himachal Pradesh inviting industries with an offer of 10 years tax holiday & thanks to the infrastructural support at Punchkula and Chandigarh, it was great hit for large number of big industrial houses like Hindustan Unilever, Colgate, Cadbury, Dr Ready’s, Panacia, Proctor and Gamble.
The current reservation of city youth to grab opportunities at Baddi will not last long with the Metro Rail project and Mohali expressway, promising to reduce the travel time to just 15 minutes to reach Multinationals in Baddi.

Chandigarh, is today a complete career city. Like in US, students doing graduation can start with corporate in various manners. The options available range from working in domestic or international customer contact centers, inbound call centers or as Customer care representatives to handle customer complaints face to face, or even be promoters and demonstrators at various business exhibitions being hosted at Parad Ground or CII.

Those inclined to grab manufacturing related assignments have full spectrum of industry to choose from. Within 50 km radius of Chandigarh, we have, textile , rubber, chemical, bulk pharma, food, medicine, packaging, wire drawing, electronics, picture tube manufacturing, heavy machine tool and industry of what not nature available. If you wish to work, there are plenty of jobs chasing you. Banks and Insurance industry is all hungry once again to grab as many as possible.

The Administration on its part lays great emphasis on training of manpower for the IT industry, and has implemented the C-TOSS (Chandigarh Training on Soft Skills) programme to improve the skills at the grass root level in schools and colleges, and the plain graduation colleges in Chandigarh also have witnessed companies requesting for campus placements. Even the recent and lesser known Business Schools around Chandigarh daily have one or the other company reaching for campus placements.

Chandigarh today is a 24 X 7 city, awake every minute and throwing open fantastic avenues of employment. The night café shopes, Discotheques, Bars, Shopping malls are creating requirements of a new genre of managers. Body builders and well-built are being sought after to manage young crowd at dance parties. Others do the ticketing, ushering and hosting of events. Disc-Jockeys (DJs) and Video-Jockeys are also increasingly in demand. Radio Channels like BIG FM, MY FM and opening up of community radio, is drawing people as Radio-jockeys, dubbing artist, online-editors, content managers, anchors etc.

The emerging equations in Chandigarh is making everyone take a second look. The fact is clearly supported by the real-estate boom, with Uppal’s Marble Arch selling a two room flat for whooping INR 25 million and Emaar MGF is carrying out full swing construction activity in Sector 104. The tiny Chandigarh is already a big tricity holding hands with Mohali and Panchkula.
Media has not been far behind, the city which knew only Tribune and Indian Express has now leading vernacular vying for readership.
The Electronic Media is contributing with about 80 cameraman and video-journalists assigned to the city.

The shape of the careers to come seems to be equally promising. New & varied avenues are opening up. City is already equipped with large number of institutes churning out hospitality professionals to cater to about 3 new five star hotels planned for the city. The aviation sector will also have its say with up-gradation of Chandigarh Airport and coming up of International Airport at Mohali. There is already a dearth of people to manage the retail chain explosion. Names like Bharti, Reliance, Chaupal, SixTen, Spencer, Aadhar, Subhiksha are looking for people specialized in warehousing, logistics, perishable goods handling, merchandising etc, the activities which were so far handled by the “LALAJI” himself.

To cater to the needs of the higher income population, city is readying up with equally paying services like hair design studios, personal grooming shops, body message centers, spa and jaccusi areas, and these all need the professional hair designers, cosmetologists, skin therapist, beauty advisers, bridal artists, tattooing experts etc. Youth can be seen discussing of working with Transformational Art Studios, Meditation centers, Artistic Yoga centers and Gymnasiums as Reiki Consultants, Spiritual Hypnotherapists, NLP experts, Yoga instructors, Physical trainers, dieticians, counselors & physiotherapists.

With the employable youth in Himachal, J&K, Punjab and Western Haryana, considering Chandigarh as a favored city, the Paying Guests are multiplying, it is not long before an organized initiate may be taken for managing needs of singles of the city. The popular dibba-walas of Mumbai may not land here in similar manner but Chandigarh will see a large number of people demanding regular home delivery of food.

Chandiwood, with the film city being announced is already home to Jaspal Bhatti’s MAD, Media and Design house. Hoards of new kind of professionals will be needed from light-men, directors, action-artists, choreographers, make-up professionals, dress designers, set designers, on-line video editors, mixers and not to mention the side artists, duplicates and crows management teams. In sports too, the kind of money being doled out by ICL and IPL, is making it an interesting option for those who just wish to play and make money.

We can safely conclude that for all those who seek work-life balance, Chandigarh has an option, in every arena of life.

Feature, Jorawer Singh, Chandigarh, July 31, 2009

With animated characters fast replacing celebrity endorsements, world of advertising is pushing animation industry to new realms. With Cokes 3D animation campaign all set to roll out tommorow, the children will have another name to add to their favorite ZooZooz of Vodafone, Pebbels of Virgin Mobile, Mrs Racoons of Wick Air & Mr T of Strepsils advertisements.

Taking a cue Schools are too trying to woo Parents through Animation Hobby classes, promising to unleash the creative genius of their children. The proposed classes, a substitute for Arts & Crafts session, promises to takes the child though various art forms starting from conventional sketching to creating 2D and 3D animation clips using advanced softwares.

“Learning Animation not only give an edge in studies but also help in better development of the child’s brain” says Harman Grewal, Regional Sales Manager with an Indian Distributer of animation Softwares. Mr Grewal sees mushrooming of Animation teaching institutes and expects good business for Multimedia and Entertainment industry this fiscal.

Referring to a research published by “Americans for the Arts”, Sukhbir Kaur, arts teacher with Guru Nanak Public School agrees that “Children who regularly participate in a comprehensive art program are four times more likely to be elected to class office, four times more likely to be in a math or science fair, and four times more likely to win an award for writing.”

Amarjit Virdi, producer of animation film on Maharaj Ranjit Singh, finds favor with Introducing children to such Animation program, and asserts that “Understanding animation has a number of benefits ranging from improving creativity to increasing self confidence.” Elaborating further he adds that “Introduction to this art helps develop a child’s creativity, imagination, cognitive skills, problem-solving abilities, fine motor skills”. Though he rues he is always short of the talent to work for him as Animation is so far a secondary career option in the mind of people.

“This is a recession proof industry and we always have vacancies for gaming artists, animators and web designers with us” says Jasmeet, a search executiver employee with topjoboptions, a recruitment agency in Chandigarh.

Education is no more boring as it used to be, and courses like such will surely improve the attendance in schools.

I have visited your website and appreciate the work you are doing for the elderly people. I am also developing a website for retired people (http://www.jobsfor60plus.com). I will be glad to extent a helping hand for the needy people and sharing views with each other. Kindly visit my site and see how we can co-operate with each other.

Thanks and Regards

Shashi Bala
info@jobsfor60plus.com

Puisque l’on ne change pas une équipe qui gagne, nous n’avons rien changé. Même équipe, même endroit, même objectif : vous aider à trouver le job qu’il vous faut, en vous proposant un accès direct aux recruteurs et à tous les outils nécessaires à la mise en valeur de vos talents.
Après sa tournée hexagonale réussie du printemps dernier, c’est donc à nouveau au Palais des Congrès de Paris, le 1er octobre prochain, que l’acte 2 d’Objectif Plein Emploi en France sera lancé. ”2” comme un espace deux fois plus grand, deux fois plus de recruteurs et encore davantage d’offres et de services pour vous prouver que même en temps de crise, les opportunités professionnelles existent bel et bien !
Ainsi, en renouvellant l’aventure d’Objectif Plein Emploi en France ou en soutenant la Journée de l’Emploi, Monster poursuit son engagement pour faciliter l’accès et le retour à l’emploi. Alors à bientôt au Palais des Congrès, et à tout de suite sur Monster.fr.