This post is dedicated to the six important years of my professional life. Yes, as the title suggest I worked at a leading call centre prior to settling as a SAHM a month back. I thought of writing this post to clarify the various myths and “stories” we have heard about call centre.
More than a decade ago, when this industry landed in India, it was rightly known as call centre as that was the only odd job handled by that sector: handling outbound & inbound calls for any other country’s business, viz. banking, insurance, technology etc. With the progressing time, India started acquiring more variety of this outsourced business which did not limit itself to calls, thus the BPO term came into existence. For example, throughout my career I was with back-end process.
Before anyone starts raising eyebrows and say that “career in a BPO??? Are you serious??” I would like to mention that the ratio of career centric professionals in a BPO is more or less same as compared to any other industry. Moreover, I feel it is completely an attitude issue and any particular industry should not be blamed because of some lazy, confused aimless persons. There are people in government sectors, teaching/education sector, IT, banking as well who are worthless and lack the focus.
Few myths & beliefs:
BPO gives you easy money: This was true till few years back when this sector was trying to settle itself in developing countries and mouthful salary package was offered even at the entry level. Now the scenario has taken a 180 degree change. The clients (who outsource their business) have understood the Indian market well and which in turn has ended up in companies regularizing the package as per the industry standards. Easy money is not there as you have to slog like anything to make yourself eligible for lucrative incentives and bonus.
Only fun loving teenagers and losers land up in BPO: This is again a twisted fact. As many programs of this industry require excellent communication skills therefore sometimes young crowd just out of college do get hired irrespective of their marks and degree. But, nowadays even Chartered Accountants are hired for specific programs as per the requirement of the clients. In context to the term losers, yes I would say that people who are part of this sector are majorly, normal graduates or post graduates who has not specialized in other vocational courses like medical, engineering etc. Does that mean they are losers???
Drugs & alcohol in BPO is as common as coffee vending machines: In my opinion, these two monsters have cemented their claws in all strata of society where they found soft grounds without any discrimination. I do agree to the fact that sometimes the young crowd who lacks maturity and have access to money does fall into this pit easily but the odd cases would always be there. It is similar to brand people as Typical Bengali or Pakka Punjabi!!! If I know one person from BPO who has succumbed to this menace then I also know 100 people who have not and are perfectly normal as any other industry’s professionals.
That's true over here I would like to add that those who make an arch with there eyebrows as soon as they here from a person working in a BPO let me tell people that only the BPO industry made we people a bit fast ( having domestic BPO's for banking, credit cards, insurance...etc... in India. Also n number of employments and the list goes on so better watch out before "making an arch of your eyebrows".
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you Nibe. People who think that working in BPO is fun and there is no growth in this sector are at wrong perception. The truth is that one should be very good at communication and hard-working.Only then he/she should be able to survive in this field. It's not every one's cup of tea.
ReplyDelete