BUSINESS TODAY

The decibel levels are back up. Dalal Street's brokerages are busy, busy, busy. With the BSE Sensex hovering around 6,000, foreign inflows strong, retail investors on a high, research advice in hot demand, M&A activity back with a bang and enough equity Public Offers lined up to papercoat the street several times over with application forms (some 600 offers, to raise an aggregate Rs 50,000 crore), headier times have rarely been seen.

For sure, booms cannot live on indices, statistics, fresh air or even money alone. Dalal Street needs warm bodies to get all the work done, and quick. This spells a bustling job market for dealers, analysts, investment bankers and fund managers. Pick up any of the pink papers, or even the mainline dailies, and turn to 'appointments'; at least three of every six ads are from capital market firms on the lookout for investment professionals. On February 12, 2004, for instance, you had a broking firm seeking dealers for its newly opened branches in Mumbai suburbs, another looking for an equity research analyst, a third capital markets firm hunting a CEO, and a funds management company asking for fund managers.

Ask hr professionals in some of the large i-banks and securities firms, and you will hear about the sudden spring in the stride of their junior-to-middle level staffers. If they duck sheepishly away from sight when their cellphones buzz, it's just another call from a potential recruiter.

For headhunters, it's an unprecedented bounty, according to Sunit Mehra, country manager, Hunt Partners, which has done a couple of senior level placements at financial services firms such as General Atlantic. "After a gap of three to four years when financial services were languishing," he exults, "today the volumes in financial services search business must be running into millions of rupees."

Hear that sound? It's the churn in Mumbai's financial world. You have IL&FS' Nandan Chakrabarty moving to Enam Securities as head of research, for instance, and Jamshed Desai of Taib Securities joining IL&FS Investment as head of research, even as Sanjay Agarwal, Co-Head at Kotak Mahindra Capital moves to Deutsche Bank. This is just a small sliver of all the action.

The good news, of course, is that all this Brownian movement is being energised by fatter baits in terms of salary offers. It's part of a major gear-up. An example is this foreign i-bank, which has recently taken aboard two financial consultants from McKinsey & Co for investment banking, and is looking to recruit at least 50 junior to middle level experts for this business-and a similar number for asset management. The firm has increased the fixed component of its offered compensation by 15 to 25 per cent.

To put that in historical perspective, it nearly matches the fixed pay increase of 1999-2000, after which the increment fell to a miserly 2-8 per cent (till now, that is). In absolute terms, it's more money than ever before. The fixed compensations at the vice president and president levels in Mumbai's better-off firms continue to be in the region of an annual Rs 35 lakh.Without the bonus, that's sizable.

Mehra of Horton feels that it might take a lot more market action for salaries to go up by record proportions. Purvi Seth of Shilputsi, an hr consultancy, however, observes that, "Those with specific skillsets and experience may see larger increases in the compensation".

What about the year-end performance bonuses? The Sensex certainly hasn't seen anything like the last six months of 2003, and if that won't make for bagfuls of cash, what ever will? Debt fund managers and bond traders raked it in for two years of declining interest rates, and now it's the equity crowd's turn.

The foreign brokerage firms operating on the calendar year have already announced their bonuses, varying between Rs 40 and Rs 50 lakh, reportedly, at the middle level-and going up to Rs 70 lakh at senior levels. They have made more than enough over the year to hand such sums out, assuredly. Specific numbers are hard to come by, since dealers and fund managers at foreign firms have rarely been as tightlipped as they currently are (though stories of lavish foreign holidays continue to do the rounds).

What about the local firms? "Bull or no bull, our performing employees have been getting rewards," says Deven Choksey, MD, KRC Securities. The typical Indian-firm bonus due in April is expected by market sources to be at around 100 per cent of the fixed salary. "We rate our employees into four categories," discloses Motilal Oswal, Chairman and MD, Motilal Oswal Securities, "and the extraordinary performers can get a bonus that can equal the fixed salary." In rupee terms, mid-level dealers are expected to average bonuses of around Rs 8 to 10 lakh, with the higher levels taking in around Rs 15 to 25 lakh.

The most exciting part for Dalal Street, though, is the unmistakable feeling that more is to come. People can barely wait for the year to get on. The very institution of bonuses, after all, is to incentivise future performance. As Brian Brown, CEO, SSB Securities, puts it, "This year is going to be the big year."

Blow this up, knock this down, twist this right, warp that left. With elections around the bend, everybody reinvents himself as an armchair spin doctor-a mind-maker who operates in the shadows to tweak an issue around to a party's electoral benefit. Except that very few are really gifted at it. So who stands a better chance? "Research experts, marketing, pr, ad guys-and even psychologists," says adman Shivjeet Kullar, Director, K-Factor, who's advising some politicians on poll strategy. Paid professionals, that is, who can sell parties their understanding of the market, apart from just their word-spin services. But hey-since when has this needed to be outsourced?

I am a 34-year-old civil engineer working with a leading telecom company. But there's not much work here, and I'm just whiling away my time. Competition and fast-changing technologies have diluted the role of the civil wing in my company. At my age, I think it'll be better for me to look for other alternatives instead of wasting my talent here. Should I do that?

When you say other alternatives, do you mean other companies or a change in function as well? It will be more difficult for you to move into the civil engineering function of a different telecom company, simply because there is little scope for enhancement or growth. If you want to stick to telecom, stay where you are, and try and look at other functions there such as technical, sales or customer service. That will not be too difficult because your company will value the time that you've spent with them, and you will be suitably placed. Otherwise, if you're hung up on the civil function, you can opt for a different industry.

I work with a BPO in Delhi, and enjoy my job. But my parents have been unsettled by the hype over the US ban on outsourcing. They feel my job is not secure, and want me to move to another industry. And to add to that, they are looking to get me married off. How do I convince them the hype is not for real? And if I make the switch, what are my options in service industries? Please advise.

Easiest option: find your own spouse! But seriously, you should know that there's no such ban. And outsourcing is not going to go away, simply because companies need to be profitable and will always look for sources to reduce their cost base. After all, who doesn't want to get a job done by spending less? There may be a risk only if costs increase to an extent to which India ceases to be an attractive BPO destination, but that is unlikely. Explain this to your parents, and tell them that these companies have invested millions of dollars and are not going to throw it all away. Tell them you love your job, what your future prospects are, and that if needed you can get another job in a different service industry. But I can't advise you on precise alternatives since you haven't mentioned what you do in your current job.

I am a senior branch manager at a nationalised bank. I am due to retire next year, and have modelled my entire career on honesty. But now, in the twilight of my career, I'm being coaxed to turn corrupt. The top authorities of the bank, in collusion with political players, are insisting that I approve a loan to a company that figures in the NPA list of several banks. I've delayed it so far, but I fear for my service record, considering my impending retirement. Please help me.

This is a tricky situation and needs careful handling. What you can do is list out your objections to the loan, in writing, and submit it to your boss for instructions. That way, even if your boss does not relent, you can't be blamed. But don't be surprised if he does relent, because the written word is very powerful. It is understandable that at this stage in your career, you would not want to take on the system and jeopardise your retirement. But corruption prospers through such weaknesses, and if you go against your conscience, it could boomerang on you. So if you have the courage of your conviction, just stick to it. But in writing.

I am a senior copywriter with a mid-sized ad firm. Till four months back, my creative director was happy with my work. But ever since our president's cousin joined the agency, his attitude has changed and he's not giving me any work. Colleagues warn me in subtle ways of a stratagem to portray me as redundant, so I can be sacked for non-performance. I've tried talking to my creative director, and even sent him e-mails, but in vain. Have I any hope?

Aren't you feeling a little too self-important? Granted, you may be good at your work, but you have not mentioned how good (or bad) your president's cousin is. And it seems to me that your colleagues are just having some fun at your expense. You should know better than to base your judgements on hearsay. Your creative director may not know your feelings at all, and your e-mails may just be irritating him. Stay back late one day, and thrash it out with him face-to-face. Trust the agency's need for your skills. And yes, do fight your paranoia. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how changing your perspective changes the situation.

Answers to your career concerns are contributed by Tarun Sheth (Senior Consultant) and Shilpa Sheth (Managing Partner, US practice) of HR firm, Shilputsi Consultants. Write to Help,Tarun! c/o Business Today, Videocon Tower, Fifth Floor, E-1, Jhandewalan Extn., New Delhi-110055.

Smile, you're on candid camera," you'd want to say, putting them out of their misery. But they're not. They're hard at work. At call centres. All the same, their most handycam-worthy moments have been captured for posterity by call monitors and colleagues' memories.

"Hi," chirped the call centre agent, "I'm looking for Jesus." The response from across the planet: "So am I, let me know when you find him." It was a Spanish name, it turned out-to be pronounced 'Hesus'. Thankfully, most centres have the customer names popping up on screens-in bold letters. 'DOUGLAS' one fine screen said, and the earnest agent asked for an instant connection to "doh-glass" (forget the half-full-half-empty argument, this fellow's on to two whole glasses here).

That's not half as bad as an 80-year-old retail customer, straining to read out her cheque number, having her dentures dislodged by the sound of, "All right lady, let's do it over the phone, give me all your bottom numbers." Er, what was that again? Nothing to match what an agent thought when he heard his feisty colleague blurt in syllable-eaten attempted Americanese, "Fer cube, it works."

-Amanpreet Singh

Dear Oh Dear...
Election gimmick, sure, but big bucks for some.

Ahh! bliss: Polls spell more pay for government chaps

Dearness? What's that? And what's this-as Budget 2004-05 has proposed-about merging "50 per cent" of it with one's basic salary? Dearness, as the Concise Oxford Dictionary goes, is a noun derivative of the four-letter word in the title-the relevant meaning being the one as an adverb ('at a high cost'). It entered the Indian government's lexicon after a labour ministers'conference recommended that a mechanism be evolved to protect wages against inflation by tying it to the consumer price index. Thus came the Dearness Allowance (DA) for government employees-to be revised twice annually.

Now DA is a percentage of the basic salary, so if a major chunk is added to base, the new DA also goes up in a sort of circular cycle (along with other proportion-calculated benefits such as pension, house rent and leave travel allowance). All in all, government employees get more money, says headhunter S.K. Soni, Chief Consultant, Fast Track Consultants, even if it sounds like a half attempt at nomenclature jugglery.

-Ananya Roy