Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) companies will approach state governments and propose to incorporate a curriculum which is more ?industry-friendly? in the colleges, according to players in the sector.
Ten companies who were part of the Nasscom BPO forum were teaming up to create a syllabus including ?subjects relevant to today?s employment opportunities,? co-founder of 24/7 Customer, Shanmugam Nagarajan told FE.
?We plan to form teams to create a syllabus which the Nasscom members find appropriate and approach government agencies to incorporate it in colleges, or if possible even in schools,? he said.
Nagarajan said that the thinking was to lessen the training burden on companies and to expand English-speaking talent pool beyond metros, from where BPOs voice-based mainly hired.
?All of the companies in the sector have to run vigorous training for its new recruits. The quality of the recruits is poor. Of the available talent pool, we are able to hire only 4% of the applicants in most cases,? he said.
According to training company Ontrac, the Indian BPO industry, which currently employ 700,000 professionals, spends approximately Rs 1500 crore towards training.
?For entry level employees, the training involves pre-process and process training and the training span would be for around 45 days,? Ontrac director Ravi Venkatesam said.
In India, BPO and software sectors have been lamenting the lack of employability of available manpower. Though both industries expand in the range of 25% to 30% annually, the manpower pool was not matching the growth, players said.In fiscal 2008, BPO sector in India hired an additional 1.5 lakh professionals, while the attrition rate in the sector was in the range of 40% to 45%, Nagarajan said.
The BPO sector was trying to shed its ?negative tag,? which often came in the way of meeting its recruitment targets. ?If not for the negative perception, we could have attracted millions more to the sector,? Nagarajan said.