Thiebear Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 I guess the gloom and doom can tone it down just a bit... Step1: Hire really crappy workers.. Step2: learn that it hurts more now.. Step3: Hire back the good workers.. Step4: Wait 5 years.. rinse, repeat. http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/business/index.ssf?/base/business-42/1118155307118900.xml&storylist=mibusiness India faces outsourcing labor shortage 6/7/2005, 10:59 a.m. ET By S. SRINIVASAN The Associated Press BANGALORE, India (AP) — India is beginning to see a shortage of properly skilled labor in its back-office outsourcing industry and could fall short by a quarter million workers in four years, officials said Tuesday. "The problem is not with the quantity, but with the quality," Rajeeva Ratna Shah, a top official of the federal Planning Commission, which directs India's economic strategy, said during an outsourcing conference in the southern city of Bangalore, the center of India's high-tech industry. Only a fraction of the 3 million graduates produced by India each year are ready to be employed in the outsourcing industry, with others needing several months of training, Shah said. Scores of Western firms farm out office functions such as telemarketing, handling customer calls, payroll accounting and credit-card processing to countries such as India, where wages are low and skilled professionals are abundant. India employs 348,000 people in such back-office outsourcing alone and adds 150,000 jobs each year. The industry earned $5.2 billion in the fiscal year that ended in March. Most people who apply for back-office jobs lack communication skills, knowledge of international practices and advanced computing skills, said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, India's technology trade body. "Companies are able to select only eight or nine people out of 100 who apply and that's pretty low selection ratio," Karnik said. Nasscom has begun a plan to work with Indian universities to improve skills needed for the outsourcing industry, he said. Karnik also said Tuesday the outsourcing trade body it is taking steps to profile workers in a central database to prevent criminals from getting jobs and threatening the data security of global companies. Instances of data theft and defrauding of bank customers by call center employees have been reported. In April, police in the western city of Pune arrested three former employees of an Indian call center firm and nine of their associates on charges they misused financial data and illegally withdrew money from the accounts of New York-based customers of Citibank, the banking arm of Citigroup Inc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenmdixon Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 Originally posted by Thiebear I guess the gloom and doom can tone it down just a bit... Step1: Hire really crappy workers.. Step2: learn that it hurts more now.. Step3: Hire back the good workers.. Step4: Wait 5 years.. rinse, repeat. addition to Step3: ...at less pay and with less benefits than what they had before they left... Been there, been offered that, refused the t-shirt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. S Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 Im not a fan of outsourcing as it is, though I guess it is helping some of our businesses. I just hate trying to talk to those people for customer service, and how they are programmed to know only a few things to say. When I got my d-link wireless card, it wasnt working initially. (2 problems, needed to reconfigure to randomly select an IP address, and I had the wrong home network password). I called around 8pm or so, and this asian sounding woman answered the phone and after 30 minutes was like 'the card is bad, go buy a new one.' I was pissed, but decided to call the next morning around 9 am. The guy had me re-set up my IP address, and then still couldnt figure it out (wrong password). He toldme to call in a couple hours. I got it working by then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thiebear Posted June 8, 2005 Author Share Posted June 8, 2005 I have several different types of servers (343 of them).. I call them ALL of the time.. It's brutal... And your name isnt Robert... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leonard Washington Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 i'm moving to india Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rydemps Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 I am in clinical research and much of the work was outsourced to India about two years ago. It just isn't working. It takes 5 there to do the work of one here. They are not qualified to do the job and they don't know what to do if they come across something that wasn't in their training. This just causes more work for us here -- more than if the work was still here. It is a good concept in that cheaper labor saves money, but long term it just doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkinsHokieFan Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 Not only that. Nobody realizes what a pain in the ass "outsourcing" jobs are to do, if you live in India. Outsourcing has started to hit up Pakistan pretty good (in Islamabad) and my cousin was telling me that is the last job you want because its a pain in the ass. So why would someone really qualified want to work in a call center? And honestly the ones that are really qualified are those that had some schooling in America because it helped reduce the accent a bit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 Just an observation, here. A lot of people "blame India" for a lot of these problems. Let's face it. The companies who moved these jobs to India knew in advance that the quality stank. Their attitude was "well, the only people who call this number are people who we've already got their money". In short, it's companies who's attitude is that a customer in need isn't a customer, he's an expense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. S Posted June 8, 2005 Share Posted June 8, 2005 Originally posted by SkinsHokieFan Not only that. Nobody realizes what a pain in the ass "outsourcing" jobs are to do, if you live in India. Outsourcing has started to hit up Pakistan pretty good (in Islamabad) and my cousin was telling me that is the last job you want because its a pain in the ass. So why would someone really qualified want to work in a call center? And honestly the ones that are really qualified are those that had some schooling in America because it helped reduce the accent a bit I would agree with this. India's educational standard is higher for pre-college age students. Their university system isnt bad either. They can get jobs coming to the US, and many have, or work in big companies at home. It seems more like a waste of talents for them to do customer support in an outsourcing environment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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