India back-office industry starts certifying staff

MUMBAI: Faced with a shortage of suitable employees in the back-office industry, India's industry body has launched a competence-testing programme to cut recruitment costs for companies and help job-seekers identify their own weaknesses.

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) announced on Wednesday a three-month pilot of the business process outsourcing (BPO) certification programme.

"People think that a BPO job is easy to get, but the reality is not that," said Sunil Mehta, vice-president at NASSCOM.

Even at large BPO companies, only six to eight out of every 100 people who applied for jobs would get recruited, he said.

"Another 15-20 could get a job if they had training. We are talking of increasing the employable pool," Mehta said, adding that the cost of recruitment could be halved.

"The training requirement in the industry is also likely to go down," he said.

Helped by cheap telecoms and English speakers working for a fifth of Western wages, India's back-office services industry employed 348,000 employees at the end of March and posted revenue of $5.2 billion in the year to March 2005.

Its revenue is expected to grow 40 percent to $7.3 billion in the current fiscal year as more companies outsource functions such as the management of customer complaints, telemarketing, payrolls, accounting, billing, data management and research.

"We face a big opportunity, but an even bigger challenge, because there is no let up in demand for services from India," said Neeraj Bhargava, chief executive of WNS Global Services.

"Projections are hinting that we may need a million more people in five to seven years. Finding the right people who are well trained is a significant challenge," he said.

The competence test will be launched across the country in January, and NASSCOM hopes it will become the industry standard.