People skills are important - Know about infrastructure sector
The infrastructure sector is poised for further growth in the future and job opportunities look bright. To find out more, The Hindu Opportunities spoke to Mr. B.N.V. Ramana, Assistant General Manager-HR at Consolidated Construction Consortium Limited (CCCL), a leading construction company in India. Mr. Ramana is a B.Com graduate and an MBA and has been with the company since its inception in 1997.
Q1. What are the typical job roles available in this sector?
The infrastructure sector consists of Airports, Roads, Flyovers and Bridges, Metros, Heavy Civil, Power Plants and so on. The skill set to perform these jobs will vary from one project to another. The typical job roles are Supervisors, Engineers and Managers supported with Quality Assurance / Quality Control Engineer, Safety Engineer and P&M Engineer. Apart from these, specialised job roles in the fields of Precasting, Piling, Electro Mechanical and so on are also available. In addition, Design Engineer, Planning Engineer, Quantity Surveying, Contracts Administration job roles are also available. Non-engineering functions include roles in accounts, commercial, HR, finance, store, time office among others.
Q2. What are the qualities you look out for when hiring for infrastructure projects?
Apart from engineering skills, we look for people skills. The construction industry is typical because one needs to have good people skills to handle labourers unlike other engineering streams.
This is a labour-intensive sector and requires skills to handle people and communicate with them. More importantly, skill set to work for infrastructure jobs is required, because of its intricate nature.
We assess entry level candidates for people skills through behavioural assessments and psychometric tests.
Q3. What are the job opportunities in this sector today and what is the outlook?
The construction industry needs engineers in large numbers. However, the percentage of civil engineers available for hire is very less. This is because, over the past few years, engineering colleges have not given enough focus to this stream of engineering.
But now they have woken up to the gap between demand and supply and are encouraging students to take up civil engineering courses. The results of this effort can be seen in the next four to five years.
Currently, we are able to fill only 30 to 40 percent of the requirements with civil engineers in this sector. We are forced to fill up the rest with engineering graduates from other streams and provide them the required training.
This is a growing sector and efforts are being made to meet the shortage of manpower.
Another factor is the lack of employability in the present crop of engineers. Though they are academically sound, they do not have the practical skills to do the job. This can be overcome if colleges provide more practical exposure to students.
Q4. What are the typical pay packages for freshers getting into this sector?
The pay packages depend on the qualification. For a diploma holder the pay package is about 10 to 12,000 per month, for a graduate in civil engineering it ranges from 18 to 20,000 per month while a graduate with a management degree can earn around 30,000 per month.
Source: The Hindu, July 11, 2012
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