Dear Engineering friends,

I want to share a article which clearly indicate that India is in demand for well-educated & skilled engineers....

Skilled-labor Shortage

It's difficult to fathom the words "talent shortage" in a country of a billion people that's getting younger over time. But speak to any infrastructure builder, and you hear anecdotes about shortages of trained fitters, welders, masons and plumbers. "Whether we will get the people necessary to support the growth is the real challenge. Both engineering and blue-collared skilled workers are in short supply. Fitters and welders are not available in the numbers you want. The industry also needs mechanical engineers who have worked in capital goods industries and would like to pursue a career [in that sector] rather than switch into software," says Allen Antao, vice president, process equipment, at Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company.  

"Once, India had such a supply of labor that we never thought we'd run out, but today things are certainly moving towards that," says Satish Magar, chairman and managing director of Magarpatta Township Development & Construction Company, which has developed a 250-acre plot near the city of Pune in western India.

The construction industry remains one of India's largest employers. Realizing the need for skilled vocational staff, the industry has begun collaborating with academic institutions to either train staff for plumbing and masonry type work, or to set up in-house training programs. "We are tying up with industrial training institutes for education and vocational development as well as organizing local training at our school," says Godrej's Antao.

Training is important, because by mechanizing their operations, companies have needed to substitute low-end, semi-skilled artisans with comparatively high-end machine operators who are in short supply. As a result, wages for crane operators and others with higher levels of expertise have risen faster than the average for other industrial workers. For instance, Sanjay Verma, head of ship power for Wartsila India, estimates that welders have seen their wages rise by 30% to 40%, while those for traditionally well-compensated naval architects and marine engineers have risen by 50% over a 3-4 year period. 

One area of shortage which hurts all infrastructure builders is the availability of skilled project managers. In the case of many developers, "there may not be that level of experience available to execute the size of the projects [that are] planned," says Aniruddha Joshi, executive vice president of the Hiranandani family-controlled Hirco Group, which has large realty projects underway in India. India hasn't seen many large projects until very recently, and the country has traditionally not produced enough skilled project managers to coordinate multiple vendors and optimal allocation of resources.

For prospective engineering students, civil engineering had lost its charm and was seen as a low-growth area, where progress would be limited and the hours long and hard. In comparison, many males who completed computer engineering programs found jobs as code writers in India's burgeoning software services industry. These jobs, which came with a possibility of overseas placements, also made the men good prospects in the traditional Indian marriage market. But with the construction boom, "salaries for civil engineers from reputed colleges, which averaged around Rs 7,000 ($190) a month three years ago, have risen to around Rs 25,000 ($600) a month now, which makes them comparable to what software engineers get. As a result, we are seeing engineering colleges report a higher percentage of students opting for civil engineering courses after several years of relative drought," says Patel.

Joshi sees a silver lining in the shortage of human resources as well. He cites the example of Japan, where construction companies adopted a "top-down" method that helped attract talent to the industry -- one that Japanese society considered a "tough, dangerous and dirty" profession. "It's good to have constraints; it forces you to come up with new solutions," says Joshi

I would recommend you to go thru these job sites which provide so many job vacanies for engineers i.e naukri, careerjet.in, http://jobs.trovit.co.in. You can also registered to local consultancies which will give you job assistance in you place.

With regards

Asha