BPO Luring our nation’s talent pool.

Business process outsourcing (BPO), there are many great substantial articles which talk about heavenly life of BPO industry.  BPO industry started in India quite few years back. Since then this word has been used widely in every newspaper, magazine and any other form of media .It has been the bread and butter for millions of young people in India. This industry revenue grossed USD 58.8 billion in the Fiscal Year 2008-2009. Taking advantage form the abundant skills and low cost benefits, large number of BPO companies has mushroomed in India in recent years, many of the well established IT companies have also started their BPO divisions.

My writing is to throw the light on other side of the BPO reality, how our nation’s talent pool got lured on pursuit of pretty perks, attractive salaries with zero innovation which started showing hazardous results on the health of the Indian youth.  There is also a graveyard shift starting at 4 a.m. working in such shifts having odd timings have, they don’t have time to think for better futures and when they actually realize and do think it’s already too late. With no time for personal life, the erratic schedules and monotonous work of business process outsourcing also disturbs the family life of the employees adding to their frustrations. This will definitely lead to lose family ties and other unhealthy behavior.

Question to our young Indians is:

Is BPO the only way to Win Bread for your family and shape your career?

You are wrong!

Following is a list of options to help you change the above perception

1. Government Jobs Vs Private Sector Jobs

Are we really having such a pathetic situation which was there during 80s of without government jobs, by this we can’t survive and fulfill our goals?  You are wrong.  The government jobs in India will give you the job security like nothing else will.  On the other hand a job in the Indian private sector is completely different ball game and you need to march to a different tune altogether.

According to survey “The organized sector in India consists of 293.77 thousand industrial establishments. Out of these, 172.34 thousand are public sector enterprises while 121.43 thousand are in private sector. The public sector employs about 180.7 lakh persons while the private sector employs 84.52 lakh persons”.

2 Engineering Streams

The private sector offers opportunities for new engineering streams as well. Some of the engineering disciplines that are popular among private recruiters are:

•    Automobile •    Biomedical •    Biotechnology •    Computer engineering •    Genetic engineering •    Instrumentation engineering •    Nuclear engineering

Following are different Private sectors in India

•    Chartered Accountant:   •    Investment Bankers •    Management Professionals: •    Oil and Natural Gas Sector •    Medical Professionals: •    Aviation Professionals: •    Modeling & Acting •    Law professionals •   Hotels and Restaurants. •    Transportation

3. Changing Mindset to diversity of portfolio.

The steady economic growth over the last few years has created multiple opportunities for the country’s youth, who are looking beyond the traditional options of engineering, medicine or law when it comes to pursuing a career.

 Across sectors such as aviation, telecom, insurance, information technology, manufacturing, retail or real estate, there are several emerging areas providing excellent options for career-seekers.

 The surge of opportunities in these areas has translated into a huge demand for employable talent. However, though there is no dearth of talent in this country, employable talent or the talent with the right set of skills and abilities for a particular job is still a question mark.

 There is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to step in and create business models which help individuals identify their strengths, map it to careers, hone their skills through customized, modularized training and eventually become employable.

4. India on Innovation:

Another aspect of looking for opportunities in India is innovation and entrepreneurship and we already pioneered in this streams, for E.g. List of Indian inventions and discoveries

“Innovations” from young minds took India by storm; the innovations were pragmatic, sensible and can find wide prevalence in India and across the globe. Though these innovations were just in “idea” form, the young Indians are hopeful of striving to bring them to existence, may be in the future.

Time to Change!

But if we see a real picture we have put our best I mean most energetic people into something which doesn’t require that much skills. Agreed that communication skills are also equally important which people master in this profession but then if we want to be a developed country some day, this certainly hurts our bid and in this way we lose our nation’s talent pool to MNC’s for their lowest grade of work.

If we compare this to China that is presently the fastest growing economy of the world and that is also seeing the greatest boom in the manufacturing industries and hardware industries, China has been able use its talent pool effectively. Growth in manufacturing and hardware industry is very essential for economy to develop at this pace. One cannot expect to just sit and ride on the software boom through IT and ITES companies.

We have to channelize the talent of our nation in the right direction and then only we can expect to compete with China and maybe US at sometime in the future. Govt. needs to show to the people the opportunities and importance of dreaming big. May be our country still lacks the vision? We are still at a position where China was in early 1990’s. China exports rose almost 10 times in a decade whereas we just managed to increase them 2 times.

I do believe that India has the required talent to reach to the top but somehow lacks the spirit to do it. And that is why we lose our best people to West either because of brain drain or because of this kind of work.