Sunday, August 15, 2010

BPO sector jobs in Sri Lanka - (Business Process Outsourcing) - Part 1

OMG you are gonna destroy your career !!!!

When I first decided to join with a BPO sector company, many people advised me not to. From head of the company to the newly joined trainees told me the same. They looked at me as if I'm going to stop my job and stay at home!!!. There were many reasons which they put up to defend their argument and which I listened very carefully. Some of their reactions were as follows. 

1. "OMG are you insane? You are joining a call center? "

2. "For God sake you are an Accountant. Even a school leaver can do a BPO job!!"

3. (In bit of an elderly serious voice) "Well you go ahead if you want. But take my word child. You work there. After three years no one will want to recruit you for another job"!!!.

4. "I have a friend of mine there and she is very disappointed. All they do is copy pasting !!!".

5. (In a conservative men's gossip tone) "Sister, you know we boys always hear stories about the culture there. BPOs are good for play boys, and girls who join those are also no different to them!!!".



Once Lord Buddha said

"Etha tumhe Kalama. Ma anussavena, ma paramparaya, ma itikiraya, ma pitasampadanena, ma takkahetu, ma nayahetu, ma akaraparivitakkena, nid ditthinijjhanakkhantiya, ma bhabbarupataya, ma samanro no garu ti"

That means 

"Do not believe a spiritual teaching just because:
1. it is repeatedly recited,
2. it is written in a scripture,
3. it was handed from guru to disciple,
4. everyone around you believes it,
5. it has supernatural qualities,
6. it fits my beliefs anyway,
7. it sounds rational to me,
8. it is taught by a respectable person,
9. it was said to be the truth by the teacher,
10. one must defend it or fight for it.
However, only when it agrees with your experience and reason, and when it is conducive to the good and gain of oneself and all others, then one should accept the teachings, and live up to them." - (
On the courtesy of viewonbuddhism.org)

So my inner spirit and thrive for adventures told me "hay go ahead. Try it out your self. ". Then nothing could stop me. I joined a BPO. 

What I felt when I left the BPO after 4 years !

After 4 years I left the first BPO I joined. Because I moved to another job which I like. When I'm leaving the BPO, my target was achieved. Everything I wanted was gained. Everything I learned was practiced. I have learned absolutely awesome things which I've never even heard of and which I could have never learned if i didn't take the decision to join a BPO. These helped me a lot in a later chapter of my career when I was really handling business. I contributed my  fullest back the company, so I came home and slept as a totally satisfied person. I felt I don't owe for the salary I was earning. My feeling can be expressed as Julius Caesar said. "We came We saw & We conquered!!!!

 
Advantages of doing a BPO job in Sri Lanka

When I say I learned so much and I enjoyed so much during my career at a BPO, some times even the people who worked in the same organization looked at me with surprise. Then they say "May be you are lucky". Well I'm lucky enough to understand how to get the maximum happiness from what I had. That's why I badly want to share this with you. Its not that BPOs are bad or useless. Its just how people see it. Its just people don't know how to get the maximum usage from it. So here we go. 

Advantages in a BPO sector job in Sri Lanka.

1. High salaries compared with market rates 

Usually BPOs cater for the customers in another part of the world which has a bigger market than ours. So they get the income in Dollars. They make expenses in rupees and therefore the labour cost and all other costs are way cheaper than what they would have occurred in the customer's country. Therefore BPOs has the capacity to offer the top most salary scales. (I'm only talking about the capacity. Whether they pay or not or how to demand and get it is another long story :D). 

2. Knowledge Base you are exposed is incomparable.

Most companies which starts BPOs here are world class companies. These multinationals have features which we cannot be experiences in any Sri Lankan company. Because obviously these companies are more than 100 times larger than the biggest local company here, in terms of revenue, customers base, employees, profit and many more scales. In fact some times their profit alone is bigger than the GDP of Sri Lanka. So I guess no need to explain what you are exposed to. On the other side these companies have a very high budget allocation for the training and development of employees which is a necessary factor to their business. I was shocked when I realise what I'm working on something which make an impact on the next day share price of a world's top ranking company. I was even more shocked when I saw the learning material in their intra-net. So I need not want to explain everything. But that was like going to university it self !!!..

3. Recognition of experience

Now when I meet people from all over the world and when they ask about where did I worked previously, I'm telling them the name of it. Everyone knows the name. It is active in every country. So they do not need to check out whether I have sufficient expertise. The name it self proves it to them. 

4. Management Systems

Many people in Sri Lankan companies complained about the fact that, appraisals and evaluations do not happened properly. Either you have to pretend so much that you are working, or you have to be boss's favourite or you need to go behind the boss and say nasty stuff about fellow collegues to cut their marks.

But what I experienced in a BPO is totally different. They had systems in place for everything. Managers are also humans and they are humanly bound to favour for the team members they prefer. But the systems in place in this company prevented any human errors but let the managers to decide on facts and customer feedback. That obviously boosted the employee satisfaction.

Disadvantages of joining a BPO

I do not reject the fact that there are disadvantages as well. It should be like that in any case. But definitely advantages over run it. 

Answers to the FAQs about a BPO

The answers I found for the initial concerns my friends raised are as follows

1. Every BPO is not a call center, and call centers do not recruit accounting graduates to answer phone calls. There are number of BPOs involve with KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) work.  

2. Now I'm an Accountant who can handle any sort of an Accounts set in an any part of the world , only thanks to the BPO job I wan handling. 

3. I'm pretty sure anyone would hire me now and I'm a much confident satisfied and happy employee. So boss, you were wrong. Now you listened to me :)

4.  I found out the bigger picture of "Copy pasting" . This statement is just how dumb some people are. Its absolutely their wrong perception and laziness to checkout what they do!!!. Its like a department head complaining that all he has to do is signing papers !!!.

5. BPOs has a more free culture.As long as you do the work assigned to you, busy people there wouldn't mind what your personal life is. Unlike in other places where people do not work but check for other people's lives, here people work rather than gossiping. Same as people respect other people's privacy and people are judged on their work performance and professional behavior rather than private lives. The people who work in BPOs are the same people we know. That's Sri Lankans. Its just that they have more freedom. They have open lives. They do not need to hide from society and pretend what they are not. They can live as what they are for real. That does helps to make happy people without mental distress. I can say one thing. The culture in BPOs don't make people sic (like many of the Sri Lankans we meet in the public transport services) !!!

Conclusion

I have no interesting in making this a more longer article by explaining everything I know about it. But I just wanted to add and share something with the work force in order to reveal the myths and make realise the use of BPOs. Its just one of the greatest ways to bring money to Sri Lanka, bring jobs to Sri Lanka and bring fame to Sri Lanka. Therefore I want to make it clear. Go for it !!!


11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good post. can u pls tel me hw 2 join a BPO & wat qualifications we need to join a BPO?

Nishadee said...

Well I was actually going to write another article on this. For now if I summarise the qualifications you required, those are the same that can be applied to any job. There are mainly Finance and IT BPOs in Sri Lanka. You have to have a degree or some other professional qualifications relevant. You have to be a really confident hard working dedicated person. You should be a team player. Basically it need qualifications some what more than to join a normal company. I will publish a list of BPOs here. Then you can check for your self. Thanks for the concern. Just go to www.topjobs.lk web site. There are lot of vacancies posted and you can get an idea. All the best :)

Anonymous said...

Well I don't think lot of BPO companies brand themselves as BPOs now-a-days. They say they are the local partner of the Mother company or something. So most of the people don't even know whether they are working for a BPO company or not! In that case, it really doesn't matter!

Nishadee said...

Well all the well known BPOs in the country such as HDPL,WNS,Amba Research,Nadastra,Medigain etc do brand them selves as BPOs.

There are companies which brand them as the local partner of the mother company. Thats is most of the times product oriented companies and not service oriented companies. And structure of these two types of companies are much different in terms of revenue generation and reporting wise.

For people who are really concerned about their career, what sort of a company they work for is something which DOES matter. :)I know there are many who do not know (in other industries). Thats why we try to enlighten them to a certain extent with what we know.

Hope this helps :)

Nishadee said...

Read the below link. You will understand how important the BPOs in future of the country.

http://www.icasrilanka.com/NewsEvents/Announce.aspx?NID=80

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the Article. When I was searching BPO job opportunities in Sri Lanka, I met this article .
This is really informative and encouraging people who are willing to move this field and also make the better picture of BOP industry in Sri Lanka.
I am also working in one of the KPO company which is managed by Sri Lankan. The major disadvantage as I see (according to the my working place)is we are not having a chance make decisions most of the time and no clear hierarchy among employees. But these are not common for each BPO industry in Sri LAanka.

Unknown said...

Hi,

My name is M.Devakanthan and i have been working as a team leader for the last 4 years in BPO. My work experiences have been with companies functioning in India. I have relocated to Sri Lanka and am trying to get a job here for my position. Any suggestions or resources you have that can help me; please do email me on dev826@gmail.com. This will be a great help. Thank you.

Nishadee said...

Hi Devakanthan,

Please go to the below link. Most of the BPO jobs in SL is advertised here. Good luck.

http://topjobs.lk/applicant/vacancybyfunctionalarea.jsp?FA=KPO

Unknown said...

Thank you Nishadee. As i have experience only in India, I am unable to get any interviews. I have applied in most of the BPOs but no luck....

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