Business | Opinion
Channel Sponsor
Filipino recruiters still hard at work
They might be weary from overwork but there is no rest for recruiters for call centres and outsourcing providers in the Philippines, in spite of the global economic slowdown.
- Roel Landingin, Financial Times
- Published: 23:27 November 22, 2008
They might be weary from overwork but there is no rest for recruiters for call centres and outsourcing providers in the Philippines, in spite of the global economic slowdown.
Unlike their counterparts in financial services or manufacturing, who can slow down as factories and banks cut jobs or freeze hiring, recruiters for offshoring companies are struggling to hire staff to serve a growing overseas client base.
"The demand for talent remains great. The industry's growth depends on how many people we can get into it," says Gigi Virata, research chief at the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), the outsourcing industry lobby.
Outsourcing industry recruiters are not just hard at work looking for potential hires, but are busy rolling out pilot programmes to improve the quality of tertiary education and boost the number of graduates suitable for the industry.
Only 30 per cent of college graduates or students are considered good enough. The industry association wants to raise this to 35-45 per cent, and is helping universities include call centre and transcription training in college courses.
BPAP is even planning to produce a "tele-novella" on You Tube, the internet video site, with a plot revolving around the life of call centre agents to encourage more young people to look at outsourcing jobs, according to Ms Virata.
Though the industry pays entry-level wages that are least 50 per cent higher than others, recruiting has proven harder than expected. Only a fifth of suitable candidates are willing to join, says BPAP.
The industry suffers from the impression that call centre jobs are stressful and offer few chances for advancement. About 18 per cent of employees leave outsourcing jobs each year.
Competitive advantage
The government is keen to promote outsourcing, where the Philippines has a competitive advantage because of its English-speaking graduates and affinity to Western legal and business culture.
Last year, the gross revenue of call centres and back office support services surged by 50 per cent to $4.9 billion, which, along with the $14.4 billion remitted by Filipinos working overseas, helped keep the country's current account in surplus in spite of a wider trade deficit brought about by rising crude oil prices.
Gross revenues in the industry are expected to reach $6.8 billion this year. BPAP has embarked on an ambitious plan to double gross revenues to $12.2 billion, about a 10th of the projected global market, by 2010.
But rapid growth in staffing - which soared from 100,500 in 2004 to 299,168 last year and could touch 400,000 by the end of the year - is straining talent pools such as Manila's universities. To hire and retain staff, employers are offering higher wages and perks. Poaching staff has also become common.
About 400,000 students leave university every year, but the uneven quality of education means that call centres turn away 90-95 per cent of applicants. McKinsey & Co, the consultancy, estimates that without intervention by the industry or the government, call centres and outsourcing providers will be able to hire only a third of the staff needed to double gross revenues between 2007 and 2010.
Apart from helping improve the number and quality of college graduates, the BPAP is also tapping so-called "alternative talent pools" such as mature employees and retirees. It is helping cities outside Manila build the capability to host call centres and other outsourcing facilities.
It remains to be seen how the Wall Street crisis will affect US demand for outsourcing services. But human resources experts in Manila say they are seeing signs that job cuts are driving American companies to outsource back office functions or customer services to places such as the Philippines or India.
"Because of the crisis, some US companies with call centre operations in the Philippines are seriously considering moving some of their finance and accounting functions too," says Jamea Garcia, a former human resources manager at a Manila-based information technology company who now works as director for talent development at BPAP.
Staffing requirements are expected to become tougher. "Some of the services we're seeing now are more complex than they used to be. There's more financial analysis instead of simply bookkeeping, for example," says Garcia.
The growing demand for outsourcing staff is a boon for Marilen Kahn, a 61-year old grandmother long retired from corporate employment, who has been hired by a call centre to handle questions and complaints about telephone bills from Hispanics in the US.
Kahn says the Spanish-language unit at her call centre company - which she declines to name - has been expanding, and recently began hiring people who have learned to speak Spanish at university or cultural institutes. It used to hire only people who spoke Spanish as a second language.
Neither the night work - she works from midnight to nine in the morning - nor the pressure from irate callers faze Kahn, who belongs to a dwindling number of Filipinos who are fluent in Spanish. "It helps I'm older than most of my callers. It's easy to put them in their place," she says with a laugh.
Share this article
More from Business Opinion
More from Business
Popular in Business
-
Budget travel
Airlines in the region
Take a pictorial look at some of the budget airlines in GCC
Business Editor's choice
-
Credit swaps... a fair trade
Would you swap an unbuilt unit at the Lagoons for an apartment at JBR?
-
New face of safety
Volvo reveals a sleeker S60, ready to hit the roads early next year
-
When the Web lives worldwide
Cutting-edge firms are building massive data facilities all over the globe
