Outsourcing the First Choice for Career Shifters in the Philippines

By Roberto L Bacasong
Company Writer
Unique Interaction Philippines

For Filipinos who wants to earn high paying jobs found their home in vibrant outsourcing industry. This is because any contact centers in the Philippines offer attractive package and benefits which awaken the interest of the Filipinos to be part in this booming sunshine industry.

Career shifters from different fields of professions enrolled themselves in the call center industry because of the higher chances to be promoted and most importantly the benefits they will receive, which is far different from their previous employers. There are so many reasons behind on the continuing increase of Filipino workers changing their jobs to the outsourcing business. Frustrations from their previous employers is one of the many reasons why there are so many career shifters in the Philippines. They found new home in the business process outsourcing (BPO) with variety of fields include call centers, medical transcription, animation, litigation support, back-office operation or shared services and software development. It appeared that cyberservices now employs 250,000 workers and generates millions of pesos to the revenue of the country.

If you are articulate in English even if you did not finish your college degree, call centers have opened doors for career shifters, as well as to some people who previously could not find jobs. The good thing in working in a call center is that it caters without age limit. Despite the high attrition rate in working in contact centers many in the call center executives believe that staffing is not the problem. Everyday almost an average of 100 applicants or more than this were applying in call center companies. The advantage of the industry is that the recruitment process takes only 24 hours and once the applicants passed, they will then proceed to the contract signing. After the contract signing they are scheduled for a month-long training before they will allowed to take calls.

The Philippine Government is expecting the total number of BPO workers to reach the target by 2010. In a research conducted by one of the national daily newspapers in the Philippines since June 2006, about 27 percent of the 199,000 job advertisements from June to December 2006 were for cyberservices. The survey was based on the job advertisement monitored to the three national daily newspapers and three jobs online companies. It appeared that in terms of ranking, cyberservices occupy the top spot, followed by construction and engineering; manufacturing; wholesale and retail; hotels, resorts and restaurants; media and entertainment; transportation, storage and communication; financial intermediation; health and social work; and advertising and promotions. Consistently, job ads from the cyberservices sector have been growing at double-digit rates from its base in June in the last five months, an indication of the growth in job creation in the sector.

The education sector in the Philippines produce about 400,000 graduates every year which is higher compared to the other Asian countries. For the industry to grow into a million workers by 2010, the industry needs to recruit an average of 200,000 additional workers each year, a figure some industry experts say is probably not achievable. Even if the industry achieves half that target, recruiting about 100,000 new workers each year for the industry would mean that a significant number will have to come from career shifters. To achieve this goal, many call center and BPO companies designed specific programs for their employees to stay on the business. These graduates produce every year can speak English and have fair level of competency to be employed easily in a call center in the Philippines.

For instance, Beau Rudd, chief executive officer of Unique Interaction, disclosed that most of his employees in the inbound and outbound call centers and live support chat are career shifters. Mr. Rudd said that they welcome the fresh graduates to apply for the position and applicants who have experience in the call centers are advantage.

“Our goal is to provide unique solutions to our business associates. We value our clients and providing proper training to the agents should be given top priority,” Mr. Rudd said. So far, there is no statistics on the number of career shifters in outsourcing. But it is no doubt that in the Philippine call center arena, it continue to grow.

Among of the basic reasons why career shifters continue to expand because the agents learned new things in American way and they were able to financially help their respective families. Some considered the environment as progressive and organizational structure is rather flat, which provides doors of opportunities. Moreover, an employee doesn’t need to wait for an official appointment to get promoted. He/she can apply for the post aspired for. Many of the managers are young, and have equally progressive management style. They encourage direct interactions with subordinates. The company’s work ethic for managers requires them to provide support to their subordinates. Also, the work environment is fun and informal, while remaining professional in terms of delivering results.

EFFECTS

The survey further revealed that its effect on other firms will probably have a limited effect. It noted that those who shift are those with technical skills for specialized accounts and are paid very well. In addition, the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) expects on achieving the country’s job targets in the cyberservices industry. CICT believes that more than 40,000 career shifters are going this industry from 2006 until 2010. CICT also expects career shifters to make up 30 percent of new employees in the medical transcription business from 2006 to 2010.*