Q Besides doing an M.Sc in the subject, what are the prospects after doing B.Sc in Fishery Science?

— Sandeep Goyal

A With a vast coastline of 8000 km extending over ten states, India is home to more than 300 varieties of fish. Hi-tech trawling and modern processing techniques have given a major fillip to our seafood exports. At Rs 6,800 crore this constitutes a fifth of all agricultural exports from India; Japan, USA and EU being the main customers. Overall, this sector contributes Rs 32,000 crore to our GDP.

Besides going for higher studies (PG & PhD) leading to teaching or further research in your field, you could look for work in government and private fishery and aquaculture units, state departments of agriculture, research units, university training centres, extension centres of agricultural universities, nationalised/rural banks, insurance companies, seafood processing units, export houses and aquariums.

Production, development and quality control professionals also work with manufacturers of other marine products and by-products like fish meal, fish protein concentrate, fish oil, gelatine, albumin isinglass, pearl essence etc.

Fishery is the next major employment sector after agriculture. With over seven million people working in this field, resource management is another vital area to be looking at.

You could pursue a course specifically in fisheries management or a broader course in agribusiness management offered by several B-schools including the prestigious IIM-A.

After this you could be working with enterprises engaged in the production and marketing of inputs and output, providing services to the agriculture sector such as export and import, rural banking, financing agri-products, insurance, logistics, water management, R & D, and rural energy.

Q I am an aspiring IT professional. Can you please tell me the difference between a database programmer, a database administrator and a database architect?

— Manik Agarwal

A Although each of these positions typically requires more or less the same academic qualifications, they vary in job content, salary and hierarchy.

Database programmer: responsibilities include writing efficient/optimal code to communicate with the database; writing server and user interface programs to handle business logic.

Rs 15,000-25,000 p.m. depending on the size of company (0-3 yrs).

Database administrator: optimises the database, tunes applications, takes backups and ensuring security.

Rs 30,000-40,000 (3-5 yrs)

Database architect: Consults with project teams, designs optimal and efficient databases, suggests database configurations and security schemes (5-8 yrs).

Rs 45,000-65,000.

(*Larger companies pay 20 per cent more). Qualifications: BE/BTech/MCA for all.

Knowledge of Oracle and Oracle Apps/Sybase/MS SQL/Mainframe DB2 / UDB DB2 required.

Q I want to do MBA but first I want to know how much amount they get as salary. My friends say MBAs get about Rs 8-9 lakh p.a. How much do they get after 5-8 yrs of experience in India and if they go abroad then how much will they get?

— Amit Khurana

A The salary you get after doing an MBA will depend to a large extent on the B-school in which you are enrolled. While IIM grads average between 7-8 lakhs (for domestic jobs, and considerably higher for foreign placements), those in the lesser B-schools must contend with much, much less. And there are over 1000 of them! The hefty figures like the $1,52000 package bagged by an IIMA student and the Rs 65 lakh p.a. package offered to an IIML student are exceptions and certainly not the rule.

There is no hard and fast rule about how much you make subsequently (8-9 yrs). That will depend entirely on the industry you are in, your track-record and the company you work in.

Q My spoken English is not very good. Will it be a problem in getting a job? How to speak the language fluently and also enhance my GK? Please advise.

— Rajat Arora

A Like it or not, English is the lingua franca or global link language of education, technology and trade today. Those who can’t speak and write good English will find it tough to survive in the Information Age. And propelled by the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) and KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) boom, India, with the world’s largest share of English speaking people, is fast emerging as the centre of gravity.

The best way to go about improving your verbal skills would be to make your own efforts to master the spoken language. This is possible by consciously listening to English programmes on radio and TV, and paying attention to correct pronunciation and intonation. Practice reading aloud from newspapers and periodicals (in privacy of course!). Try this as a simple exercise if you want to hone your GK skills as well. Read five pages of the newspaper i.e. front page, business, international, edit and sports. Make bullet points on the edge capturing the gist of articles. Use the tape-recorder to record and review your process.

Grab every opportunity to converse in English. The more, the better! Ask a well-meaning friend to help you out and correct you wherever necessary. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. English is not our mother tongue. It’s but natural that we are not hundred percent fluent in it. However, practice makes perfect.

Once you overcome the initial hesitation, you will be surprised how quickly your vocabulary and conversational skills improve. Just try and see.

Read `Word Power Made Easy’ by Norman Lewis to improve your vocabulary.

Q What is the difference between engineering research and the research done by scientists?

— L.K Singh

A A scientist asks "why?" and proceeds to research the answer. By contrast, an engineer explores "how" to solve a problem, and how to implement that solution.

In general, it can be stated that a scientist builds in order to learn, while an engineer learns in order to build.

In other words, scientists investigate phenomena, whereas engineers create solutions to problems or improve upon existing solutions. However, there is often an overlap between science and engineering.

In the course of their work, scientists may have to accomplish engineering tasks (such as designing experimental apparatus or building prototypes), while engineers often have to do research.

It is not uncommon for scientists to become involved in the practical application of their discoveries; thereby becoming, for the moment, engineers.

Conversely, in the process of developing technology engineers sometimes find themselves exploring new phenomena, thus becoming, for the moment, scientists.

However, engineering research is different in character from scientific research. First, it often deals with areas in which basic physics and/or chemistry are well understood, but the problems themselves are too complex to solve in an exact manner. The purpose of engineering research is to find approximations to the problem that can be solved.

Let me give you a couple of examples: the use of numerical approximations to the Navier-Stokes equations to solve aerodynamic flow over an aircraft, or the use of Miner’s rule to calculate fatigue damage to an engineering structure. Second, engineering research employs many semi-empirical methods that are foreign to pure scientific research, one example being the method of parameter variation.

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