NIFE

Creating jobs in emerging markets

How to secure a secured job? Ask NIFE, the institute that has a proven knack for spotting emerging opportunities in new markets. Over the past 15 years, NIFE has introduced one-of-its-kind diploma courses for the first time in the country in three emerging fields, fire and safety engineering, dental ceramics and lift technology and the results bear out their vision and foresight. Today, thousands of people are gainfully employed in these sectors, and a majority of these are the alumni of NIFE.

The openings in this field are in the area of safety, particularly constructional safety and in design and installation of fire protection systems.

The Gulf Region is a major destination for these openings because of the construction boom in these countries. The laws relating to constructional safety are so strict in the Gulf that for every 25 constructional workers one safety personnel is mandatory. That translates into hundreds and thousands of safety people required at constructional sites. Similarly fire protection systems are a compulsory installation in multistoried building.

No wonder NIFE has thousands of its ex-students working in safety and in the fixed fire protection system industry in the Gulf. In India also a good majority of their students are working in construction projects/companies in their safety departments and fixed fire protection departments. "Only a small percentage of our students are placed in absolute fire fighting," clarified Mohemed Shuaib, Branch Manager, underlining the point that there are a multitude of jobs outside of the high risk absolute fire fighting segment. "On an average around 90 % of our students are working in the field of safety and design and installation of fire protection systems, two specific fields with very little fire and fire fighting."

Today, opportunities are innumerable in the field of fire and safety engineering, dental ceramics and lift technology with high pay packages.

When it launched the fire and safety diploma course in '92, it was the first institute in the private sector to do so. Similarly, it was the first to identify the tremendous job potential in dental ceramics in India. There are multifold opportunities in dental labs, especially ceramic labs, as ceramic technicians. Reason: The doctor to technician ratio is 1:1.

Availability of ceramic teeth, its texture, durability and colour had added a new dimension to a dental clinic's functioning. But the moot question is where are the trained hands in making the ceramic teeth, operating ceramic oven. NIFE spotted this gap and identified the opportunity, and thus came out with a diploma course in dental ceramic technology. The net result was creation of hundreds and thousands of jobs and opportunities.

The institute then looked at lift technology. The installation of lift, its commissioning, maintenance and servicing is a technical job. If the lifts stop in cities, life simply grinds to a halt. Every major city of INDIA has an installed population of over 50,000 lifts each. Which means there is a huge need for large numbers of trained hands. The net effect: NIFE introduced another tailor made diploma course in lift technology.

Lift manufacturing companies like OTIS, KONE and Mitsubishi are on a perpetual hunt worldwide for effective hands in installing and commissioning lifts. Similarly lift maintenance and servicing companies requires thousands of technicians for maintenance and servicing of lift. The Gulf countries with their construction boom have a very large requirement of work force in this field.