Attrition effect: young English speakers get the call

As call centres witness significant attrition in talent pool, they are not only poaching from their rivals but also looking out for next best category (termed as A- and B+) of English-speaking youngsters.

There is clearly a huge gap in demand and supply. After relying on assessment partners to check the credentials of fresh applicants, call centres are discovering a severe shortage of skills in the long-term.

"We do not need to sell IT to youngsters anymore. Placement consultants take up the initiative of sourcing the talent, while we verify it for the client. On an average, 4 out of 100 applicants meet the demand of the client. There is a severe skills shortage," says Madan Padki, MeritTrac Services Pvt Ltd. MeritTrac is an assessment partner the IT and ITeS sectors. Its clients include ICICIOneSource, Oracle, Accenture, Microsoft, HP, Cognizant, SAP and Computer Associates.

MeritTrac is excited about the prospects for the industry, but is equally worried about the quality of people who are expressing interest to be part of it. Besides internal assessment procedures by companies, partners like MeritTrac are indeed doing their bit to ensure that the industry gets the best-in-class talent.

The long-term worry for this industry is not "fake" identities wanting to enter the call centre business, but the lack of good English speaking skills in schools and colleges.

Says V Bharathwaj, AVP-global marketing, 24/7 Customer, "We have not encountered any fakes so far, primarily because of our screening process and the process of vendors filtering the candidates before forwarding it to us. We have tied up with agencies, to carry out the initial screening especially in the case of agents. We give them a detailed brief about the organization's requirements. They save us time and effort with regarding to rejecting candidates who do not fit the organization's requirements."

According to Prakash Gurbaxani, CEO, TransWorks, a majority of the candidates are young, college graduates with degrees in Arts and Commerce.

"Almost 70 per cent of the candidates are genuinely interested in the job and also need the money. There is a great deal of seriousness about the industry now as more people view stable companies like Transworks as a career opportunity rather than a transitional job."

Most reference checks and verifications at TransWorks are done internally by the HR department. Assessment partners at this point in time are yet a support system and take on only additional verification work. The company's main concern is the talent pool that is fast drying up.

"Most companies are still looking at recruiting the cream of the available talent pool. But this category will soon not be available and BPO companies will have to target the A- and B+ category of people, and train them to meet the required recruitment standards," adds Gurbaxani.

For a new company like Progeon, a BPO subsidiary of Infosys Technologies, screening is indeed a critical mechanism even with only 18 per cent of its revenues coming from call centre activities. The company offers end-to-end transaction processing services to strategic segments like banking, insurance, security, finance and accounts and telecom.

Rigorous reference checks, relieving letter from previous organisation made compulsory, which acts like a service record and character certificate are some of the procedures to check the applicant's identity.

"Screening needs to be done right from the initial recruitment stages to check authenticity of qualifications and work experience. In our experience we have not had a significant percentage of fake applications. We do work with a couple of Assessment partners. We use them primarily to do our reference checks for potential recruits. These are credible and experienced agencies who maintain records of the applicants." says Nandita Gurjar, VP-HR, Progeon.

Nandita is also quite concerned about the fast depleting talent pool. "Given the competition for talent in this sector and the increasing salaries, companies need to move towards enhancing the talent pool as well as increasing the success from the same pool. This will require investing in strategic initiatives in training, tapping talent not just from cities but also larger towns etc."

However, the number of people who are being assessed is exorbitant. MeritTrac alone saw and assessed 150,000 candidates in this year. Of this, nearly 90,000 candidates were assessed for BPO skills. About 4000 candidates were actually hired.

"Grammar and accent neutrality are two key areas where the students fail. This is followed by general aptitude and ability to handle repetitive task. Many a time, a student does not even know why he is rejected by a call centre. It is important to work on these issues, especially in colleges," says Padki.