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Next Human Resources in the Geospatial Industry Dr. Satyaprakash satya@GISdevelopment.net Last year during same time, I had written an article (GIS Education: Training, Placement and Prospect, GIS Development Asia Pacific, March 2007, vol. 11, issue 3) on the status of students who undergo training at various educational and training institutions and how do they perceive the industry, before they join and what are the realities. The survey, however, was limited to the students of GIS Institute (the education and training division of GIS Development conducting training for the last seven years). The response to the survey was encouraging, although the results were not, in terms of type of jobs they are into and the compensation they get. One of the conclusions, which I had last time was that, since the students of GIS Institute have undergone short term training (maximum three months) and the background of most of the students was graduate/ postgraduate in the field of geography or related fields (barring a few who had engineering or software background), the salary was on the lower side. To take the survey further, this year, we expanded the scope of the survey, redesigned the questions asked, adopted different methodologies to get the responses and also used the data available on a popular job site. METHODOLOGY The scope of the survey was extended so as to include the employees and also the students of different educational and training institutes. The questionnaire was made available online at www.GISdevelopment.net portal and also was distributed at the recently concluded Map India 2008. Two types of questionnaire were designed that targeted the students and the people already employed in this industry. The questions asked to the employees mainly concentrated on their qualifications, experience, their satisfaction level, growth prospects in this field, on the job training and how do they compare this industry with the mainstream IT? The students were asked questions which were more related towards their choice of this stream, the technology they are interested in, the type of job they would like to involved in upon completing the course and the feel good factor. The employees as well as the students were also asked to respond to their wish so as to which three preferred companies (in order of preference), in the field of geospatial, they would like to work with. Other responses were easier to present and analyse, the most difficult was the "preferred company to work for". A weight was assigned to the ranks (60 for rank 1, 40 for rank 2, 20 for rank 3) and the score was averaged over the number of responses, it received. However, only those companies were analysed which polled at least 10% of the total responses. We received a total of 57 responses (17 international and 40 national) from the employees and 81 from the students. Although the sample size is not sufficient, but we tried to analyse the data which might show some picture of the industry, in terms of people in the industry, their qualification and experience. Since this survey does not include the salary, we tried to analyse the bio-data available on one of the popular job portals, in India. We have assumed that 90% of those who is in the industry have posted their bio-data, at some point of their career, at this job portal. We compiled the data of 26 well known and major companies working in this field. The sample size for this survey was 563. Please note, we have tried to present a picture based upon the data collected, which might or might not reflect the true picture of the industry, but whould be indicative. No statistical analysis tool has been applied to the data. REPORT CARD In the subsequent sections, the response has been presented with some analyses.      Page 1 of 3
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