Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

BPO jobs - big bucks and no skills?

Anasuya Menon

Coimbatore: Are call centres creating a generation of uneducated youth? This is a pertinent question raised with the burgeoning of business process outsourcing.

While they come as a boon to youngsters, experts in various fields feel that call centres promote a job culture devoid of creative challenges. A few working in the marketing industry and academics feel that the culture of BPOs has shifted the focus of youngsters from education to earning quick money.

There is no need to have a degree or repertoire of knowledge for a low-end BPO job, says Harish Bijoor, Chief Executive Officer of Bijoor Consults, Bangalore.

Requirement

The only requirement is a skill to converse in accented English. "It promotes a generation of single-skilled youth," he adds.

The industry aims at cultivating a purely voice-based skill. Currently in India, the industry employs nearly three lakh people and almost 10 lakh people are being trained only in voice and accent skills.

These are the people who have just basic education (Plus Two or Class X).

Students no longer feel the need to continue their education after Plus Two for, they can land up jobs that earn them a fat pay packet at a call centre.

Getting degrees

Earlier, Indian youth felt the need to get degrees in order to earn themselves respectable jobs. But, now they are becoming more and more financially independent at a very early age, he says.

Though the higher-end BPO jobs require qualified hands, lower-end jobs such as data-entry or data conversion do not require even graduation.

"The money in the industry is very alluring to a student who has just completed Class X or XII. They may be paid somewhere between Rs. 12,000 and Rs. 13,000 a month," says A. Elangovan, president of Digiscape Gallery, an institution that provides training for e-publishing, (a BPO in the publishing industry).

However, it is up to the person taking up the job to utilise the opportunity a call centre provides.

They could earn for themselves and utilise it for their higher education. Working in the industry for a short while before pursuing higher studies does no harm, and also gives them financial independence. However, earning a huge amount at such a young age may encourage youngsters to get into unwise spending patterns, he says.

The growth prospects for young people with no graduation are also bleak within the industry and it offers no creative challenges for the person to develop his or her knowledge base.

While many blame it on the lifestyle and Americanisation of Indian youth, educational institutions should consciously discourage students from accepting low-end call centre jobs and provide them counselling even after completion of the course, Mr. Bijoor says.

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