Career Hotline
Hit the bull’s eye
Pervin Malhotra

Q My son recently topped the junior shooting competition at school. I am keen that he takes up professional shooting. What are the costs involved in getting him started?

— K.K. Sharma

A Giving your trigger-happy son the right direction is a smart decision. Shooting, as a career, seems to be bang on target, especially after Major Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s triumph at the Olympics in Athens . While the eastern cities are lagging behind in offering shooting facilities, in cities like Mumbai youngsters are queuing up to hit bull’s eye. Today, a middle-class urban Indian can get initiated into this sport by paying as little Rs 200 per month in a local sports club in Mumbai.

In certain schools and colleges, shooting classes are mandatory.

Aspiring marksmen can begin practising at local clubs and ranges in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Indore, Mhow, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.

A number of schemes are also offered by the government for training marksmen. Cash incentives are offered to medal winners. Ace shooter Anjali Bhagwat was awarded Rs 80 lakh for medals bagged during 2002-03 championships. However, some feel that it is hard to make a fulltime career out of this sport.

The expenses entailed subsequently can be a major inhibiting factor, which is why most of the earlier shooters belonged to royal families. An air pistol for example can cost up to Rs 80,000; standard pistol Rs 1.5 lakh, while trap shooting is exorbitantly expensive as the shotgun itself costs Rs 3 lakh. Ammunition costs vary from event to event. Besides, the equipment and rifle gear, including jacket pants and shoes, can cost anything between Rs 10,000 to Rs1.5 lakh.

During the initial years, your son will need to train under a senior shooter but once he is established as a marksman at the national level, the sky is the limit. Some of the key qualities of a good shooter are concentration, patience, hand-eye co-ordination and alertness.

However, unlike other sports one does not have to start out at a very early age to be a professional. While shooter Abhinav Bindra may have started at age 14, Murad Ali Khan and Major Rathore were late off the block, starting at 32 and 28 years respectively!

Communication skills

Q I am facing problem in soft skills like communication and presentation. I have read so many books on these topics and attended some workshops as well, but in vain. What to do? Please help me. You may not believe it but I am an engineering graduate working in the software industry for the past more than three years.

— Nitin Bhalla

A Soft skills are sometimes pretty ‘hard’ to acquire. While books can inspire you, you need to continuously practise them till they become second nature.

You have to consciously and actively keep at it.

Don’t be afraid to fail. English is not our mother tongue, so we are bound to flounder a bit. So what?

Be natural and relaxed. Don’t try to be what you are not. You’ll never feel at ease assuming mannerisms that you are not comfortable with.

The first thing is to feel good about yourself. And build on your strengths. Reach out to people and show a genuine interest in what is happening around you.

As you rise up the corporate ladder, soft skills become even more crucial. A Harvard University study found 85% of promotions depend upon our communication skills and attitude. That’s worth thinking about!

In today’s service-oriented scenario, communication skills (talking and listening effectively) and how you deal with people are non-negotiable requirements for every professional, including those in technical fields like IT.

Presentation skills are relatively easy to acquire. Just need preparation. And practice.

Recruitment people look for people who are optimistic, well-mannered and team-players (there’s no ‘I’ in the word "TEAM"). If you can rally people to a cause, build relationships and loyalties -lots of them; are self-confident and can add value to the organisation, and are you.

Practice makes perfect: Practice in front of a mirror with a tape recorder. Later practice conversing with people you are comfortable with until you are ready for easy inter-personal interactions with clients etc.

If being at the front desk where you have to constantly interact with people makes you distinctly uneasy, then handling back office operations like computing data, research and writing may be more your cup of tea.

Q I ’m doing my BA and want to become a professional dancer. How should I go about it? Please suggest me some training institutes providing training in dance.

— Daljeet Kaur Singh

A To be a professional dancer, you first have to decide which form of dance you wish to excel in. It could either be Indian classical dance (i.e. Bharatnatyam, kathak, kuchipudi, Odissi), folk dance, Russian ballet, modern (salsa, jazz, jive etc).

Dancing is fun but it can be a career only for a few. You need tremendous physical fitness, talent, stamina and grace to succeed.

Classical dance is probably the most demanding and precise of dance forms. You should ideally begin your lessons at an early age because it takes nearly seven or eight years of training to become a professional dancer.

A dancer’s life appears glamorous and exciting. While this may be true for a minority, the regimen of rigorous daily practice, combined with gruelling stage performances can be a somewhat different reality. You need to keep your body in peak condition at all times.

Western dance is also becoming increasingly popular — particularly with the younger lot. Earlier confined to social dancing, musicals and talent contests modern versions like jazz dancing, salsa and funk etc have received a shot in the arm with music videos and dance numbers popularised by dance troupes trained by Shiamak Dawar or Ashley Lobo performing in all film award functions and movies.

Q I’m a college student with multiple interests. I enjoy computer programming, I could have become a college lecturer. I am interested in business, but I’m scared of taking risks. How do I decide on a course of action?

— Harish Garg

A It’s common in the early stages of career planning to be faced with multiple options that seem equally promising. You’ve identified three courses of action, each of which has its plus points and drawbacks. Here are a few steps to help you arrive at a decision:

Step #1 should be focused on you — your skills, your interests and your values. Try and draw up a rough picture of your ideal work environment so that you can evaluate your choices as you learn more about them. Next, take a month or two to thoroughly immerse yourself in researching and exploring each of these occupations. Use the Internet to learn as much as you can about programming, teaching and running a business. Talking to professionals in the three fields that interest you, would be most important part of your research. The only way to gather first-hand information on what it takes to survive and be successful in a particular occupation is by talking to professionals who have been working in the field day after day. Finally, focus on the work environment. As you will discover, the quality of your work life would be very different in each of these fields. Guide your decision by carefully comparing your preferences with each position. If you follow these steps, you would have gained in clarity and made an "informed" choice, which in turn, will drive your plan of action.

Q I have taken various engineering entrance exams this year. What if I don’t get the field of my choice (electronics)? I have no idea what most of the other fields are all about.

— Harvinder Singh

A I have often noticed that the interest and aptitude of students who opt for a particular branch of engineering has no obvious relationship with the courses they land up with. This is mainly due to two reasons:

Lack of proper information and guidance about what each field is all about and the scope it offers in the long term. And even more commonly, the student ends up taking whatever branch is available in the pecking order due to the limitation of seats in some of the popular branches like computer science or electronics & communication.

The present system of technical education in India (unlike its American counterpart, which offers multiple entry-points and amazing flexibility) for instance, is a rather straight-jacketed one, with more or less a single entry point and a rigid course structure.

This being the case, I would advise you to gather as much info rmation as possible about various fields and talk to some practising engineers, so that you end up making an informed choice.

The AICTE has approved 32 courses in engineering and technology at the undergraduate degree level (check out the list on www.aicte.ernet.in). And don’t fall for courses with exotic new-fangled nomenclature — like the ones flaunted by some of the private univ ersites in Chhattisgarh which have been derecognised by the Supreme Court like "Master of Biotechnology Administration" and "BSc with Automobile Science"!

In case you don’t get the field of your choice, plumb for the next best one (if you’re not prepared to take another shot at the exams next year). The good news is that you have good chances of upgrading to a more ‘desirable’ field at the MTech level in many cases. Another option would be to top your engineering degree with a top-of-the-line MBA. A techno-management qualification is always in demand.

Q I passed my Class XII from the commerce stream with 75% marks but discovered that one needs to be a science student to be eligible for the merchant navy. So I worked really hard and passed the Class XII science exams from NIOS with 72 %. But now some of the training schools I’ve approached tell me that DGS does not accept NIOS students. I am totally shattered.

— Rohit Khurana

A I can imagine how heartbreaking that must be for you!

You are right, the Directorate General of Shipping did have some apprehensions about the NIOS science curriculum (particularly the "practicals"), but they have subsequently found it to be on a par with other regular boards.

This means that you can now happily proceed towards your dream career, as long as you meet the mandatory physical requirements.

Now that the decks are cleared, just keep a close watch on recruitment ads issued by shipping companies in newspapers and apply to them directly. Or apply to DGS approved pre-sea training academies as and when they advertise. Here’s wishing you all the best for your future.

The writer is a noted career expert

Please send in your query, preferably on a postcard, along with your full name, complete address and academic qualifications to: Editor, Jobs and Careers, The Tribune, Sector 29, Chandigarh-160030, or at careers@tribunemail.com