BPO Companies are finding it difficult to get suitable candidates for their job requirements
: News from Bangalore, India.
Last week one of the Major BPO provider conducted a Walk-in interview for their Back office-processing center in Bangalore.
An advertisement was placed in all of the major dailies a week in advance, and mailers were sent to the employees.
Requirement was simple, graduates with good command in oral and written English.
On the day of the interview almost 675 candidates turned up. After the preliminary tests 11 candidates were only found to be
matching the standards. Finally after the Final rounds there was only one candidate who cleared everything. Cost of the
recruitment exercise was more than 3 Lakh Indian rupees, including advertisement cost and other logistics. The new facility
that was to be started needed around 200 executives. Company was hoping to get at least 50% of this from Bangalore. But it
turned out to be a big disappointment.
A recent recruitment drive in Kochi for a Bangalore based Call center attracted at least 1000 candidates. The 4 star hotel
where the interview was going on was packed with crowd. But finally by evening when the results were out only Six out of
those candidates had cleared the test and interview.
These are not unusual incidents in the BPO industry now. There are many other companies here who are facing the same
situation. What is going wrong? Where is all the qualified, English speaking crowd that India boasts about?
According to Mr.Srivastava, head of a leading placement agency in Bangalore, it's becoming very hard to find suitable
candidates for the mushrooming BPO industry. The English skills, is the main problem. Most of the students who have done
English medium education do not find it very difficult to get into BPOs. In fact for many of them it's a stopgap job between
studies. Many of them who are academically done well do not find BPO as a long-term career. The take up the job for a year or
two after graduation and comes out for further higher education or professional qualification. The left out crowd in the
market are those from local language medium education or from smaller towns. Their English is not always up to standard.
During the early 2000, the market had an abundance of skills for BPO market. The initial excitement of getting a job
immediately after your graduation was new in India. The compensation offered was also very attractive. Most of the candidates
from all industries opted for BPO jobs. But the industry was witnessing almost 30-40% attrition during the end of 2002. Many
of the initial joinees quit due to the hard work and night shifts that was affecting their social life and general health.
Call centers were the worst hit. Many found the volume of calls unbearable, and many companies who were just started did not
have their systems in place to monitor the well being of their employees. They had frequently changing shifts, incompetent
supervisors and bad facility management. Those who quit that time never would have gone to the same position in any other
BPO. Many of them opted for day jobs and the word of mouth spread around.
It took almost another year to overcome the initial glitches for many BPO setups. Now many of them have swanky offices in the
outskirts of the company. Many facilities have Cafeterias, food courts, gym, doctor and recreation facilities. Transportation
facilities are better managed today. People in the management are better trained to handle situations. All these along with
aggressive recruitment drives started to bring good quality people to the BPO companies lately.
Most of the young graduates in Bangalore today do not worry about getting a job. BPO companies do not recruit professionally
qualified people for their process executive position. So unlike other IT companies in Bangalore, who goes out to campus and
recruit, BPOs face a tough job for recruitment. Moreover IT companies look more for technical capabilities than communication
skills. The number of candidates opting for non-professional courses are coming down steadily every year. This could be due
to more number of professional institutes coming up or due to the fact that many of them are affordable to the general public
after the economic resurgence of the country during the late 1990s.
The English skill of an average Indian graduate is not very good when it comes to oral communication. They are good in
understanding the language, but communicating is always been a problem for many. The root of the issue is the difference in
the way Indian languages are structured and how English is used. Many of the Indian graduates use English only while writing
or during academic communication. In big cities like Bangalore, the situation is slightly different. Due to the cosmopolitan
nature of the city it becomes inevitable to use a common language and it happens to be English than Hindi as in South India,
Hindi is not used much.
The market opportunity for English training is already been realized and tapped by many English tutors and training
institutes. Still there are not many credible institutes even in Metros. What is required today is a collaborative effort to
bring the possible candidates to the level of proficiency that a call center executive is supposed to have. Many of these
tutoring institutes fail to do that.
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