Behind every successful music director or playback singer is the work of a good sound engineer. H. Sridhar, who was music director A.R. Rahman's sound engineer, was one of the most respected technicians in the field.

Professionals say a career in this filed could be filled with excitement. Dispelling the notion that the field was mundane and offered no room for creativity, Mr. Kumar said contrary to public misconception, the job was very interesting. In this field passion for music and success are inter-related, said Manoj Kumar, director, Soundtech Media.

Due to the highly technical and specialised nature of the field, the monetary input is high. However, the remuneration involved is adequate as long as the person is willing to work hard, he added.

Soundtech Media, Chennai, offers a one year diploma in sound engineering and recording arts and a one year diploma course in music technology and production.

The field of audio engineering or audiography is not restricted to the music industry alone. There exists a huge demand for sound engineers in the radio, television and film industries. Every radio station requires at least three sound engineers and there are thousands of recording studios that require at least two engineers.

The demand and supply differential is huge and audio engineering as a full-fledged career option is definitely viable. The demand for sound engineers would escalate in the coming years, said a spokesperson from School of Audio Engineering, Chennai, likening the field to the IT sector before the boom.

The recession in many developed economies has its repercussions on our campuses. Students now dream less of landing attractive jobs in multinational companies coming to campuses in search of them. The scene is beset by confusion and uncertainty as they keenly watch the global economic scene.

The Hindu-EducationPlus spoke to a cross-section of students and faculty in South India and found them harbouring concerns of various degrees about career prospects. Some admitted being shattered and confused, while others tried to console themselves saying it was too early to affect them.

Seriously worried are the final year students, particularly of engineering and management institutes, who may not find a prospective job market when they pass out.

"We can't predict anything. Let us see what is happening. We will have a better picture when the current final year batch leaves the campuses in 2009," said M.P. Induchoodan, Head of the information technology faculty at M.E.S. College of Engineering.

A general belief is that the recession will lead to stagnation in the job market, causing more worries to the students.

While the proposed over 2.5 lakh hiring is mostly for the financial services industry, the industry experts believe that the overall job market scenario is also set for a recovery in the second half of the year.

Topping the list of the companies planning to hire big include public sector banking giants like State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank as well as insurance firms such as Anil Ambani group's Reliance Life, SBI Life, Metlife, Max New York Life.

Even some BPOs and healthcare firms like ACS and Accentia are planning to hire thousands of people in the coming days.

The proposed hirings include more than one lakh of full- time employees and about 1.5 lakh in the part-time positions with the insurance companies
.

Among other sectors, manufacturing and export-oriented businesses are, however, likely to continue to witness some pressure in the next few months, after huge job losses seen during 2008.

Currently, the telecom sector directly employs about 150,000 people, while providing jobs to another 1.5 million with retail outlets, prepaid card sellers and tower constructors, which is expected to go up further, given the rural market expansion by these players. "The new players will have to attract talent by offering 15-20 percent higher salaries," said Krish Shankar, HR head at Airtel. Some of the new players such as Unitech, Swan, Loop Telecom and Shyam Telelink have started hiring and analysts feel this could drive poaching at top and middle management levels.

"Finding and retaining talent is a challenge today. Although we have an experienced workforce, at times they are short in supply. We generally look within the country itself, but are not closed to talent from anywhere if need be," said CN Nagakumar, chief HR officer, Tata Teleservices. The problem for the new players would be to get people in the core telecom space, which is primarily concerned with the technology of providing telecom services. While talent in sales and marketing can be found in abundance, sourcing professionals for setting up the infrastructure and networks would be difficult.
New players are looking at training inexperienced or fresh graduates, owing to the talent crunch. "We have a team in place, however, we expect a shortage of talent with a number of players entering the market," said Vsevolod Rozanov, CEO of Shyam Telelink, which is recruiting from campuses.

The export orders have fallen by more than 25% to 30% in last two months. It is feared that if the crisis prevails in the next few months, more than 50000 workers will be rendered jobless in this industry. The industry provides employment to the weaker section of the society including women. The labour is scattered in and around two major manufacturing centers i.e. Jalandhar in Punjab and Meerut in UP

As per recent survey conducted by Sports Goods Export Promotion Council (SGEPC) with few top exporters, business worth Rs. 45 Crores has already been lost by them collectively. This figure, when compared with total export of Rs 500 crores is sizeable. Main countries importing sports goods from India are Europe, USA & Australia. Since recession has gripped these countries/regions, the meltdown is being felt by the Indian Sports Goods Industry. Moreover sports goods are considered as leisure time items & not necessities.

Consumer spending is automatically diverted to necessities in the time of recession. Further slow down in the industry is also expected in the coming few months, if no relief is provided by the Govt. Most of the buyers are adopting the policy of wait & watch before placing fresh orders. Not only that, but the buyers have issued instructions to delay the shipments which are ready for dispatch in the factories of sports goods manufacturers, leading to rise in inventory.

The Sports Goods & Toy sector has even been ignored in the recent fiscal package announced by the Govt., despite the fact that this sector has been declared as a labour intensive sector in the Foreign Trade Policy announced by the Govt. in the beginning of this year.

Sports Goods Export Promotion Council (SGEPC) has already submitted a Memorandum to the Minister of Commerce & Industry to include this sector in the special package being announced by the government for Labour Intensive Sectors.

While a fresh IAS recruit will join on a grade pay of Rs 5,400, a teacher will join with a grade pay of Rs 6,000.

"Under the sixth pay commission, grade pay determines status and seniority Before this, teachers and IAS of .

ficers were on a par, but now teach ing has become more lucrative," said Shiba C. Panda, member, Executive Council, Delhi University (DU).

What's more, both teachers and IAS officers are placed in Pay Band 3. But now teachers with a PhD will get promoted to Pay Band 4 in only 12 years, while an IAS officer will get there in 14 years.

"The pay revision will go a long way in retaining talent. Now we have quicker promotion. The concept of senior lecturer has been done away with.

So all teachers, whether a PhD, or MPhil or with neither degree, will join as assistant professors," said Panda.

Assistant professors will have three different academic pay grades of Rs 6,000, Rs 7,000 and Rs 8,000 before being promoted to associate professor with a grade pay of Rs 9,000.

Associate professors have been placed in the pay band of Rs 37,400-67,000.

"This is a huge qualitative jump for many senior teachers who have been stagnating in colleges," said Aditya Narayan Misra, president of the Delhi University Teachers Association.

The programme has been jointly developed by IGNOU's school of law and legal talent management house Rainmaker, and would start from February 2009.

Ashank Desai, chairman, Pan IIT Alumni (the alumni association) and founder Mastek Ltd said currently the association had 175,000 members from various IITs. The Pan IIT Alumni has initiated three important projects that include `Indo-US collaboration for Engineering Education' (IUCEE), `IITians for ITIs' and `Reach 4 India'. The projects would be funded by the government, the corporations and the and IIT alumni.

The IUCEE is an initiative to improve the quality of faculty in non-IIT colleges and institutions. Around 50 professors from the US would come to India every year to train 500 faculty members who , in turn, would train 10 more faculty members. Over the next five years 80,000 faculty members would be trained through this initiative across the country, said Desai.

The Reach 4 India project has been launched to create more jobs and entrepreneurs in the rural parts of the country, said Desai. A welding training school and a driving school has been set up in Chennai and near Jaipur, respectively, as pilot projects.

These sectors combined made 280 job offers out of the total 657 made for the Class of 2008, which had 421 students. The Class of 2009 has 440 students.

ISB dean M Rammohan Rao said: "We do not expect the companies to recruit in large numbers, as they did last year. But that will not mean that the students will go job-less. We are inviting more companies to the campus this year for campus recruitment."

The institute is asking its students to set realistic salary targets. Last year, 230 companies participated in the placement drive. The average cost-to company (CTC) package for an international offer stood at $ 144,812. For a domestic offer, it was Rs 19 lakh per annum. The financial sector made 95 offers last year, IT and ITeS sectors made 148 offers and real estate made 37 offers.

There are tens of thousands of students like Kapur, who took large loans in recent years to pursue expensive courses abroad, hoping to pay these off with dollar salaries they would eventually land. Suddenly, they find their back against the wall, with a fast deteriorating global economy forcing companies worldwide to freeze hiring or cut jobs.

"Whichever bank and company I've approached so far has claimed a hiring freeze," said Kapur, who has mortgaged her parent's house in New Delhi as a collateral for the loan she took from the State Bank of India. "I'll continue doing internships till I find a desirable job but things will get really tough once I have to start repaying the loan next year." Last year more than 1.2 lakh Indian students went abroad for further studies -- 83,000 to the United States alone. Barring less than five per cent of them, the rest either took loans or borrowed from family and relatives.

"The lure of foreign education and high salary prompts thousands to take huge loans," said career counsellor Usha Albuquerque. "The shrinking job market, however, has put a big question mark on the future of these students." There has been a surge in education loans in recent years, despite rising interest rates. According to the Re- serve Bank of India, education loans from commercial banks totalled Rs 23,795 crore in 2007-08, up 143 per cent from a year ago.

Since cases of default are not uncommon, banks insist on parents be- ing co-borrowers.

Employment opportunities after the course and the income of parents were factors that banks weighed while giving the loans, said K.C. Chakravarty, chairman and director, Punjab National Bank.

The former has taken a beating in recent months, forcing lenders such as ICICI Bank to discontinue loans for students going abroad. "One of the reasons why we discontinued the loan was because the process was complicated and chances of defaults seemed high," said an official at the bank, who didn't want to be named.

Also, the loans are not cheap.

Interest rates range between 10 per cent and 14 per cent, depending on when and from whom it was taken.