Inside the Outsourcing Industry:Job Hunting

A longtime friend who has not kept in touch with me for many years (four? five?) sent me a text message yesterday. I was able to speak with him, and found out the unfortunate news that not only has he not kept a job, he has begun to lose hearing in one ear. I can write an entire post on how terrible this is - given how much this friend of mine loves music, and is in fact a major influence on my own musical tastes (he introduced me to Steely Dan, my favorite band); but I am going to write something related to the job market situation in the Philippine outsourcing industry.

If not for the hearing loss, my friend would be very employable. He is intelligent and technologically competent. More importantly, he is highly conversant in English and this is the most important competence at present in the Call Center job market. In the outsourcing industry, voice-based services enjoy the highest premiums - so going the call center agent route is ideal for a worker looking for the easiest entry and at the same time best paying (entry-level) job.

Fortunately, the customer services in the industry are varied, and don't always rely on phonecalls. Some examples of this are email support and instant messaging/chat support. It is in these services that my friend was asking about. My company has both.

The thing is, the organization supplies its personnel needs for these services from the pool of its active customer service representatives, particularly those who underperformed in the voice aspect of their function. The profile of these people is that they are adequate in product knowledge and process competency, but do not speak clear enough English (accent and/or pronunciation issues).

Given that non-voice, and especially email services are less in the realm of real-time as compared to inbound voice, the weaknesses of the employees profiled above are less relevant. They enjoy an advantage of ready familiarity and competence in the accounts' products and processes over new hires. Furthermore, the organization prevents unnecessary turnover and increases overall productivity in the face of potential waste.

Although there are and will be organizations who'd rather hire new employees for such services, it makes less sense for them to do so based on the aforementioned considerations. This is why I am not optimistic about my friends' chances (at least in my company).

I am not without my network of headhunters and industry insiders, so I'll leverage it to assist my good friend.