Scouting for the right talent
|
A uniform, nationwide assessment model for recruiting personnel to the BPO sector is in the process of being developed by the National Association of Software and Service Companies. What kind of test will an aspiring candidate for a BPO job have to be prepared for in the future? G. Mahadevan finds out.
|
REVENUE WORTH $18 billion and an employment generation of one million - that, according to many research agencies, is what the ITES/BPO sector will give India by 2009. Already, the performance of this industry - export revenue of $5.2 billion in the financial year 2004-05 and additional employment generation of 1,00,000 - has caused the financial pulse of the nation to quicken.
However, ever since 2001, when this industry started growing the way it is doing now, industry observers, including the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), have always pointed to the human resource (HR) challenges that would grip this sector in the days and years to come.
The Nasscom through its BPO Forum, `HR Group' and now its `Nasscom Assessment of Competence' has tried to deal with those very HR issues that the industry is already facing.
Foremost among such issues is the question of being able to recruit the right kind of persons into this sector, an issue that has proved vexatious for many BPO companies and recruitment agencies.
Working model
The new initiative from Nasscom seeks to set this right by developing a working model for assessing those wishing gain employment in the BPO industry. After initial consultation with more than 30 BPO/ITES firms, Nasscom has kicked off a pilot programme using four companies to give a final shape to the assessment model.
The discussions resulted in a shortlist of seven testing themes that are being used for assessment in the companies participating in the pilot programme.
Testing themes
The seven testing themes are - listening and keyboard skills, verbal ability, spoken English, comprehension and writing ability, office software skills, numerical and analytical skills and concentration and accuracy.
According to information made available on the website `nasscom.org', the tests on listening and keyboard skills will gauge the candidate's accent, competence in understanding spoken language, depth of listening and of course his skills on the keyboard.
This test will be conducted in an autonomous mode, in other words there will be no human intervention in the test.
The test of verbal ability will put in perspective a candidate's grammar and the correctness of his sentence construction. This test too will be done on the autonomous mode.
The test on spoken English will look into such things as clarity of the candidate's voice, his fluency in English, vocabulary, grammar/sentence construction, accent and situation-comprehension. This test, however, will be carried out through an assessor who will then grade the candidate. The first part of this test will be autonomous in the sense that the voice of the candidate to be assessed will first be recorded and sent via the Internet to the examiner.
The testing of a candidate's comprehension and writing ability too would be done by an assessor. In this test, like its name suggests, a candidate's clarity of communication and comprehension will be graded. Similarly, a candidate's level of competence in the `Office' software tools, his numerical abilities, logical reasoning skills, his adherence to a given process and attention for detail too would be probed in the relevant tests.
The benefits
Is such a nationwide assessment-of-competence model called for? If yes, what are the benefits that will accrue to all the users of the model?
Nasscom, even before initiating the pilot project, put on its website the advantages for the industry for having such a model. These are:
- A national standard for recruitment of entry-level talent.
- Fifty per cent cost savings in industry's sourcing cost.
- Ease of benchmarking for individual processes with industry standards.
- Ability to create visibility and reach out to a larger audience.
- Ability to filter out non-serious candidates and hence improved efficiency.
- Cost savings through cutting off steps from the recruitment process resulting in reduced cycle time and more efficient utilisation of resources.
- Cost savings through reduced training hours in full-blown operation.
Nasscom has listed out the benefits, in having a universal model to assess competence, to the candidates seeking employment in the BPO/ITES industry.
- No need to go through the same recruitment process at different companies.
- Ability to identify the job-seekers' strengths and weaknesses.
- Ability to self-assess his/her training needs.
- Opportunity to get certified on a national-level basis under Nasscom.
As per the Nasscom website, even the companies that train candidates for absorption in BPO firms stand to gain by this `new deal.'
Once the assessment model gets going:
- The central assessment of candidates will be a filtering criterion for employers and a training need assessment for candidates.
- The candidates will be advised specific training modules as a part of the result as per their shortcomings.
- The employers will provide incentives to candidates to come through this assessment.
- Over time, the intent is that the industry should hiring only candidates who come through this assessment.
Inputs
Nasscom has also appealed to training organisations to give "pertinent inputs" on the back-end framework of training processes to enable it to fine tune its assessment model.
But do the industry players share Nasscom's apparent enthusiasm? Industry insiders who talked to The Hindu-Educationplus hailed Nasscom's initiative as a step in the right direction.
Rakesh Gupta, chief operating officer of Allianz Cornhill, an U.K.-based insurance company working out of the Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram, said the new initiative can help the BPO industry shake off the negative image it has developed over the years in relation to recruitments. He pointed out that Allianz is already doing the things that Nasscom were doing in its pilot programme during its recruitment procedures. The autonomous nature of the tests proposed by Nasscom can ensure a "fair and consistent" method of evaluation, he said.
Good initiative
"The objective of the Nasscom initiative is noble and valid.A common assessment system will benefit all the stakeholders - the employers, applicants and the industry," said Madan Padaki, director of the Bangalore-based assessment firm, Merittrac Service Private limited.
Serving the purpose
"Any initiative of this sort serves two broad purposes," Mr. Madan told The Hindu-Educationplus in an e-mail interview, " First, for the candidates - to create awareness about the BPO sector, help them focus on critical skill-sets and provide objective feedback on skills that needs improvement and second, it creates a mapping of talent pool available across various cities in the country - on which recruiters can focus on."
Mr. Madan also pointed out that assessment companies such as his that have great insights into the talent pool in the country have much to gain by being a part of such an assessment programme. Significantly, though, he adds that the present mode of recruitment may not die down entirely even after the Nasscom model is rolled out commercially.
Not the sole model
"First of all, BPO companies may not use this as their sole model of recruiting. Yes, candidates who appear for the common test will be preferred, but companies will not turn back candidates who do not have such a score. So assessments at the companies will continue to exist," he points out.
He argues further that as the BPO industry matures and scales a lot more of niche, specific skill-sets will be in demand.
"Any mass programme of the likes of Nasscom will test only the basic skills - like communication skills, basic computer awareness, etc. and it is not possible to get into a myriad of specific skills like medical terminologies, GAAP Accounting, Windows 2000 User, Networking Fundamentals, etc. BPO Companies will need to assess such skills too and it is in these assessments that we will have a significant role to play," he says.
Government's role
The State Governments too, it appears, have a role in ensuring that the right kind of people gets into the BPO industry.
Nasscom's argument is that all earlier State Government initiatives in certification failed at the validation stage.
So, if the NAC is implemented by all Sate Gvernments,it will help in employment generation, attracting serious investors, will help create a concept of `education' to `employability.'
But then is the pilot version a comprehensive model, is there a scope for improvement?
Mr. Rakesh Gupta, for one, would like to see a psychometric test also to be made part of the test package. This, he says, would help the employer know the mental makeup of the job-seeker.
The commercial version of the NAC is expected roll out by January next.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Education Plus
Kerala
