BPO firms grapple with ‘unfit’ cadres

The $16-billion business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in India is now spending more time than ever before in training their employees, especially the freshers, as they are finding greater number of young graduates highly unemployable.

The BPO industry, which is used to spending about two-to-four weeks in training the young graduates, has now extended it to anywhere between 60 days to six months.

This has also resulted in training costs for the companies going up of late. Explaining the rationale for higher training time being devoted for their employees, Infosys BPO CEO Swami Swaminathan told FE, “As the industry has moved from delivery of mere transactional services to more transformational initiatives, we need battle-ready employees as clients demand 100% quality and expect them to hit the ground running from day 1.”

Though there has been talk of the growth rates slowing down for the IT industry in India, the BPO segment has not seen any dramatic fall and they are still faced with a demand–supply mismatch in terms of acquiring talent.

“Earlier, we used to train people for six weeks; now, we train for five months, because the quality of workforce has dropped drastically. Today, you are hiring educated unemployable youth,” said Raman Roy, CMD, Quatrro BPO Solutions.

Industry experts say there are five basic skills, which BPO companies look towards today when they hire young graduates: communication, comprehension, corporate skills, computers and analytics. Majority of

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