After the gruelling experience of the pandemic, the world is opening, albeit slowly. Education abroad has been an aim for lakhs of students in India. Not all can successfully study abroad, regardless we can try. It is important to note that studying abroad is expensive and when you invest so much money you should be sure about the course and career you want to pursue. You should try not to study abroad if you have no plans to work abroad. Consult a career counsellor to discuss your option and evaluate whether it would be advisable to study abroad.

DARRYL D’SOUZA explores a few options that rank amongst the high-paying, up and coming careers in countries abroad.

USA

The United States of America has been on the list of every student at least once.

Mass Media: Hollywood and Broadway dominate the entertainment industry in the world in terms of revenue. To add to it, the television industry and the OTT platform have only given a boost to this industry. A career in photography, cinematography and journalism could serve your purpose in working with any top broadcaster.

Renewable Energy: The whole world is moving towards renewable energy and the USA is trying its best to come up with cheap alternatives to petroleum and other non-renewable energy sources. This has caused a rise in careers in the field.

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The pandemic of 2020 has been a decimator in many countries around the world. Many people have lost their livelihoods. Career options have evolved as well. In order to avoid infections, many organizations moved to a work-from-home model. This resulted in a whole new type of working — remote working. Recent research shows that around 25-30% of working professionals in developed and developing countries prefer working from home rather than going to an office. Major companies have already begun the process of moving to a remote or hybrid (work from home for half the days and come to office when necessary) model of work. Researchers predict that in the near future employees who work from home will outnumber those who go to offices.

These factors have not only resulted in an evolution in various careers but also a creation of new careers. Students now have multiple work-from-home career options they can choose from and be successful financially all in the comfort of their home. Here is a list of these careers:

Beauty influencers / Make-up artist: We live in a world where social media dominates our lives. Some of the most frequently-watched videos on various social media platforms are by beauty influencers. They are, in general, make-up artists who showcase their skills on social media. This leads them to earn through sponsorship deals with various beauty products or through any clients they may get. You could pursue a short-term course in make-up to start a career in this area.

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According to the latest research, the number of admissions in the science stream post 10th grade/standard has increased, while admissions for engineering and medical fields have decreased. The same is the case with the clichéd fields in commerce and arts. Thus, the time for alternate career fields or hatke careers has arrived.

Here are a few alternate careers to the mainstream careers we are usually familiar with.

Engineering se hatke!

India has a total of 6,214 engineering and technology institutions in which around 2.9 million students are enrolled. Every year on an average 1.5 million students get their degree in engineering, but due to lack of skills required to perform technical jobs, less than 20 per cent get employment in their core domain. Admissions for the medical fields are decreasing as well. Hence, think of the following as alternates:

Microbiologist: 2020 broke all of us with the pandemic. It was quite scary to see a small virus wreck so many lives. However, it brought the whole world closer. Every major country, including India, banded together to look for a vaccine for this deadly virus. India itself came up with two vaccines. Ever wonder who these heroes are who worked hard to save the world? It was the microbiologists who worked hard to achieve this feat! You too can be like them. Just take a B.Sc. in Microbiology post the 12th grade followed by a Masters. You could work in a research lab anywhere in the world.

Pharmacist: Every tablet or syrup you find bitter is made by a pharmaceutical company. With pharmacy you could work in the frontline of making medicine and distributing medicine for a whole range of sicknesses. All you need to do is to take B. Pharm. post your 12th grade.

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You say you know how it works. Simple isn’t it? You get above 80%, take science; if you get above 70%, you take commerce. Anything below 60% and you take arts. Sort! Right?

We have been living under these pretences for a long time now. India ranks way down in the bottom in the world happiness index. Can you guess one of the main reasons for it? I’ll tell you…. “Mere beta/beti engineer ya doctor banega/banegi!”

While we hear stereotypical sentences like this less often now, one can’t deny that choosing one’s career or subjects leading to the career is a big problem. You are either confused because you haven’t heard of certain subjects or your family isn’t allowing you to take a certain subject because they don’t see any future for you in it.

While you teens obviously get frustrated with this you have to realize where they come from. Your elders (parents and other relatives) grew up at a time when they kept seeing people being successful in science and commerce while people in the arts kept getting into risky careers.

While that was true then, things have changed now. The opportunities in every field have increased threefold. To add to it, new careers are springing up every day. You have no clue how many times I have flirted with the idea of leaving my job and travelling around the world to be a travel blogger like Dhruve Rathee or NAS Daily.

Young people today have a lot of pressure from every angle to choose a career they can be successful in. So here’s a simple list of questions you could ask yourself to come up with the best career plan for yourself.

What are my favourite subjects?

Check for which subjects you love studying. Not just because you get good marks in them. Check for subjects that excite you. Even within a subject, check for the topics that do and don’t excite you. For example, if you like science, check for which subject within the science stream excites you the most. If you like physics and find biology tedious, maybe taking science without biology in junior college will be the best plan for you. Another example could be if you like calculations and topics like that more than algebra, maybe commerce would be a better fit for you instead of science.

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“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You, too? I thought I was the only one.” 
~ C. S. Lewis

When we are with friends who understand us we don’t feel alone, and the sense of belonging gives us security.There is something very comforting about following other people and doing what everybody else is doing. The power of friendship is such that not only our friends but our “friends of friends” can also influence our lives. Thus, how we manage our friendships in school/college can eventually have a bearing on our ethics, work habits and most significantly our career paths.

Whether we like it or not every now and then we tag along with our friends and do the same activity that they are doing. If your friend is going to the gym regularly there is a reasonable chance that you might be tempted to go along to keep them company. Similarly, if your friend is going out for a smoke you might tag along to just hang out and inhale smoke passively. Friends can sometimes goad us to take risks that we are not comfortable with and very often it becomes difficult to say no or to walk away. To quote J. K. Rowling in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.” The strong desire to be “liked”, to “fit in” to be considered “cool” by our friends are universal desires and cuts across all age groups. It is for this reason that friends have a great influence on our lives and can help us nurture our goals or take us away from them.

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“Youth no longer seek jobs but can aim at creating jobs.” Recently, I was talking to the HR head of a well-known organization in the hospitality industry. He was speaking of how this is a fantastic time to be young in India. It’s a new India in the making. Today, India is one of the fastest developing countries in the world. Youth are no longer only the future of the country but very much so also the present! The past three years have witnessed the emergence of an ecosystem that is encouraging and nurturing willing minds and passionate spirits to take the entrepreneurial route. With technology, government support, media attention, a positive outlook that encourages start-ups, today’s youth are being encouraged to dream, to dream big, to dream the best that can be. These are indeed exciting times.

In his book Vision 2020, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam shared that pre-independent India had many dreamers, capable men and women who dreamed of a strong and modern India. They enriched the county with their actions and in their domain whether economics, education, literary arts, science, reflected various aspects of the freedom struggle. Kalam stressed that the strength of our nation, one of our core competencies is our human resource. India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25. According to the 2014 UN report, India had the world’s largest youth population with 365 million 10-24 year olds. This is a wealth of resource. Not only from the perspective of providing services but also a large potential consumption market. Kalam further went on to make an important observation that Indians not only have great learning capability but most have an entrepreneurial and competitive spirit and that there is a need to create avenues to constructively channelize this spirit. I believe today we are again at a point where capable men and women are being called to re-imagine and dream of an India that is an innovation hub, that is the provider and creator of opportunities wherein in realizing one’s potential, one is directly contributing to nation building.

Kindling the entrepreneurial spirit

The future promises to be different from anything we have witnessed in the past. The digital world is creating new possibilities. Kishore Biyani, Group CEO of the Future Group and one of India’s leading entrepreneurs, in an interview said that India has a lot of entrepreneurial talent and it is a dearth of knowledge, infrastructure and capital that keeps such talent hidden. It is amazing how in less than a decade, the environment has rapidly changed so as to address the very points that Biyani spoke about. Today, India is one of the top five start-up communities in the world. The entrepreneurial spirit has begun to get the attention and nurturing it needs. Today, anyone with the drive, passion and a winning idea has the option to decide to embark on something new. India has emerged as the fastest growing base for start ups worldwide and globally we have moved up to third position in terms of a conducive ecosystem for start-ups to thrive. (Nasscom Report 2015: ‘Start-up India: Momentous Rise of the Indian Start-up Ecosystem’)

It is interesting to look at the start-up ecosystem that is developing in our country.

Investment

Foreign investors are showing tremendous interest in the India start-up story. Top investment firms such as Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Soft Bank, Warburg Pincus, Alibaba are among the top investors in India. The Nasscom report states that the Indian start-up community saw nearly five billion dollars of funding come in 2015. An India with a large number of people connected to the internet and a large consumer base is driving this interest and growth. Based on data published by YourStory.com, e-commerce companies lead the pack in terms of attracting investment, followed by consumer internet and mobile apps.

Government support

The Government is aiming at introducing policies and procedures to improve and strengthen the overall ecosystem. The recently launched Start-Up India Action Plan aims at strengthening the start-up movement and is being touted as a major breakthrough for entrepreneurship in India. From policy innovations to legal support to relaxation of financial and labour norms, tax exemptions to investments in promoting innovation and research focus, the start-up community is cheering this support and roadmap that the government has laid out.

The PM’s statement at the launch of the Action Plan is particularly important: “I hope that the start-up action plan will give strength and inspiration to the talented young generation of India to do something new for India and for humanity.” The youth are truly being seen as contributors and builders of a new country and humanity at large.

Communities and support

Colleges and corporates are increasingly setting up incubators and accelerators to nurture small start-ups by providing services that the start-ups would be too new, inexperienced and unconnected to acquire on their own. These could be strategic consulting, branding, PR, fundraising, design, etc. The number of incubators and accelerators has grown in the country over the past few years.

The youth themselves are taking an active role in building the ecosystem. Anto Philip and Shreyans Jain, while pursuing their undergraduate programme at Christ University, saw the need to build a community for young innovators, entrepreneurs and basically anyone who wants to do ‘great stuff’ and make an impact. Out of this need, the Under 25 club was born. It is today a platform for all those under the age of 25 to showcase their skills, ideas, speak with others from the community who have made a mark, started business and making a difference. The first Under 25 Summit was held in 2014 in Bangalore and saw 100 attendees. The 2015 Summit saw over 600 participants. In 2016, the Summit will be held in multiple locations across the country in a bid to fulfil the vision of reaching the maximum number of youngsters in India. The first Summit for 2016 in Bangalore saw over 1,700 participants and over 100 especially chosen speakers who have made a mark in their chosen field.

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