Risky business

• Q: Can you let me know how one can get home-based Internet jobs? Are they reliable? How can we check the authenticity of such advertisements?

Mridula Marwah

• A:Enter any website and chances are that you will find advertising banners exhorting you to work from home and earn pots of money. But then, if that were true, wouldn’t we all be working from home?

Here are some dos and don’ts that you should remember before you take up any such offer.

Know who you’re dealing with. Often, companies may have no plan to employ you directly. They may only want to sell you training material and find customers for your work.

You must also find out if there is really a market for your work.

Don’t fall for promises of making big profits easily. Operating a home-based business requires hard work, skills and time besides good products or services.

Get references from other people who are doing this work. Ask them if the company has kept its promises.

Beware of offers to send you an advance on your pay. Some slick operators use this ploy to build trust and get money from your bank.

They send you a cheque for part of your first month’s pay. You deposit it, and before it has been cleared, the company contacts you to say that you were mistakenly paid the wrong amount, so you need to return a portion of the payment.

After you send the money back, the cheque that you deposited ultimately bounces because the company’s home-based job plan is an elaborate hoax.

Now the crooks have your payment, and you’re left with a hole in your pocket.
So be very careful.

Deal only with legitimate companies that hire people to work for them at home.

Better prospects for engineers

• Q: I have joined an engineering college, partly because that is supposed to be the most prestigious stream for students at my stage. But I don’t feel comfortable and would rather opt for management. Please advise.

Diwakar Chahal

• A: Normally, engineering students who prefer to go into management join a business school after graduation. But if you are in a hurry, you can leave the engineering programme to join a bachelors programme in business administration or commerce, something that I would be reluctant to advice. In fact, an engineering degree is worth more in the job market than a BBA.

Many engineering colleges, including the IITs, are increasingly offering courses in financial management, trends in business and finance,
industrial engineering and operations research as electives to BTech
students.

Of virtual reality and the big ad world

• Q: I have a BFA degree with a specialisation in commercial art. What are the career prospects in web advertising?

Rishab Ganguly

• A: How often have we cursed those irritating ads that pop up every time we browse the Internet or the spam that infiltrates not only our mailbox but also our cell phones?

Although these ads bug us, they are part of a strategy that has been cleverly crafted to capture the capricious eye of the consumer. With technology transcending space barriers, the Internet has become a viable and cost-effective advertising and brand-building medium, connecting advertisers and marketers to customers from Manhattan to Meerut with text, interactive graphics, video and audio.

And with the increase in the number of Indian netizens who spend hours glued to their computer screens, the number of jobs available in the world of online advertising has also steadily multiplied.

Nasscom's Strategic Review 2005 states that less than 10 per cent of Internet users in India buy products online. But the good news is that e-commerce is catching on in a big way and an upbeat PriceWaterhouseCoopers report is convinced that in the coming years, the Internet will be the fastest growing advertising medium.

If you want to take up advertising on the Internet as a career, a stint in a good brick-and-mortar ad agency would be a good starting point for the simple reason that web advertising is just another form of direct response advertising. Although the medium varies, the principles of advertising remain the same. You also need a working knowledge of Java.

Some ad agencies with whom you can start your career are Lintas India Ltd, Mumbai (www.ap lindia. com), Ogilvy and Mather Ltd, Mumbai, Mudra Communications Ltd, Ahmedabad (www.mudra.com), National Advertising Agency, New Delhi, Pressman Advertising and Marketing Ltd, Calcutta and Bates India Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi.

You can learn Java by joining training centres run by NIIT Ltd (e-mail: edgeineers@niit.com) or Sun Microsystems Ltd (e-mail: Edu_Enquiry_IN @sun.com). You can also try Aptech Ltd (e-mail: customercare@aptech.ac.in) in Calcutta or other cities in India.