BPOs offer jobs to school passouts in smaller cities

A small town chap, just out of school knows exactly where to apply for a job? a BPO company. Increasing opportunities in the $1.4 billion domestic BPO market have encouraged Indian BPO companies to open delivery centres in tier II and tier III towns. As a result, vendors like Spanco, Aditya Birla Minacs and MphasiS are hiring more school passouts rather than graduates in these cities. Whereas metros still have a higher percentage of graduates as employees because of complex processes, smaller towns are comfortable with hiring non graduates to cater to the domestic clients.

As an industry average, last year had more of graduates working in the BPO industry but since many vendors have gone to tier II towns and rural areas to operate?the overall percentage of passouts being hired has increased. Debasish Das, chief human resource officer at Spanco BPO says that in 2009, the company hired 90% graduates and 10% school passouts. But because of entering smaller towns, the overall hiring ratio for the company stands at 70:30 for graduates and non-graduates.

On the behavioural difference between metros and non metros, Das says, ?Our metro centres have higher percentage of graduates as compared to tier II and tier III cities. We entered Dehradun in mid 2010 and we have almost 50% school passouts as employees in the city. Even Coimbatore has almost 40% non graduates. Our centre in Mysore too has 60% school passouts as employees.?

?Since 2008, the number of school passouts joining BPOs have increased by almost 50% in small towns. This is because the domestic outsourcing business is more successful in tier II and tier III cities,? says Amit Bansal, CEO at PurpleLeap, a Pearson Educomp JV company. He clarifies that though the domestic banking process would still need graduates speaking good English, but other domestic processes are comfortable with school passouts as associate agents.

MphasiS BPO too has a different hiring strategy for metros and non metros. The BPO has expanded presence in key tier II locations across the country. Currently it has centres in Indore, Mangalore, Ahmedabad and Puducherry. Narayanan Nair, global head ? staffing, MphasiS says that 70% of its hiring in small towns is school passouts whereas in metros it stands at 60%.

Milind Godbole, president, APAC at Aditya Birla Minacs which has more than five centres in tier II and III cities has a view which is a shade different: ?Initially we hired more graduates when we entered smaller cities. But as you start scaling up, you start getting down on the graduate number and hire more of school passouts.? He says that 95% of the domestic calls in India are in state language and one does not need to be highly qualified to cater to that.

Deepak Kaistha from Planman HR Consulting notes, ?Another reason for hiring more passouts is that these BPOs now have an inbuilt capability to train people, which was not very prominent previously . They hire talent from tier II and tier III cities and train them to the mark. Cost of operation and lack of manpower is compelling them to pick up talent from small towns.?

Nair from Mphasis agrees, ?Although we have quantity, we do not have quality in these cities. A vast of number of potential candidates require proper training to polish their skills, which is essentially not bottom-line lucrative. We manage this by creating strong training academies internally, that mould employees and make them employable.?

However, on the brighter side, the positive thing about employees in tier II cities is that they do not earn pocket money; they earn livelihood or salary. As a result, even attrition is lower in these towns.

?Employees in tier II locations, look for stability, unlike their counterparts in tier I cities. Salary comes next on their list of priorities as there are working in their hometowns. Employees and families in tier II cities inclined to be more emotionally connected with the employer. As a practice, we encourage employees and prospective employees to bring in their families to visit our workplace for them to get a sense of where and how their loved ones will be working, ? says MphasiS? Nair.

Thus, even though non metros continue to churn out more jobs for youngsters, the ?employable? population is still very low. Hope to see the BPO training increasing the employable candidates.