Kiran Karnik

Bangalore: Graduates aspiring for jobs in the booming IT-enabled Services (ITeS) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sectors should polish their English-speaking skills. For, India's famed ITeS and BPO industry will not even "look at you as a potential employee" if your English-speaking abilities are poor.

This may sound strange because India's rise on the world outsourcing stage has been attributed to its abundance of English-speaking workers and low wages. But, faced with a supply crunch, the IT industry feels that its time to focus on this aspect once again as it embarks on a national programme to tap the talent in distant corners of the country rather than limit it to the metros by transforming the "trainable workforce" into an "employable workforce".

"The ability to understand and converse in English is an important aspect of the IT industry. If you don't have a reasonably good ability to speak English, among a few other attributes, prospective employers won't even look at you," said Kiran Karnik, President of the IT trade body, National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM).

According to the NASSCOM-McKinsey Report 2005, India will face a shortage of semi-skilled workforce in the next decade, mostly in the ITeS-BPO sector. Currently, only about 25 per cent of technical graduates and 10 to 15 per cent of college graduates are suitable for employment in the offshore IT and BPO industries, respectively.

NASSCOM pegs this shortage at five lakh by 2010 with 3.5 lakh in BPO alone and another 1.5 lakh in the ITeS space. Mr. Karnik called for educational reforms to improve the English-speaking abilities of students. "Spoken English is not a part of our traditional education. You keep your mouth shut throughout your 16 years of education, except when you go for your kindergarten interview. Spoken English is also not a priority while doing Ph.D. But this industry requires team-work," he said, lauding the efforts of some States, including Karnataka, in introducing English from Standard One. The national rollout of the NASSCOM Assessment of Competence (NAC), a national assessment and certification programme designed by the trade body in tandem with Hewitt Associates, will begin in November. NAC, a common, transparent test across companies in the ITeS-BPO sector, is aimed at creating a robust and continuous pipeline of talent by assessing candidates on key skills such as written and spoken English, analytical ability, and keyboard skills.

NASSCOM stated that NAC would increase the reach of ITeS-BPO industry to Tier II and Tier III cities for their sourcing requirements as well as spreading awareness about job opportunities in the industry.

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