As I was driving back to my home from work I saw a BPO cab fly past me, at a speed I could not even guess.I had to use the term “fly” because that is the only appropriate term for the way it was being driven.

After a couple of accidents over the past few days involving these call center cabs, there was a huge furore amongst the law-makers and they decided that they will tame this animal.There were new traffic rules formulated and call centers cabs and transport departments were advised to employ speed governors in these cabs and that cabs were to ply at not more than 40 KM/hr. But obviously none of these seem to be implemented, looking at the way things are as on date.

I would rather suggest that nothing of the above is required but a bit of initiative from the employees travelling in these cabs. I have often found that the employees sitting in these cabs encourage the drivers to drive fast. Only if they were concious about their own lives they would have ensured that the cabs were driven in limits and this problem would have been taken care off. We often tend to ignore the act that the cab is being driven above permissible speed limits and enjoy the thrill. But what we forget is that in doing this we are not just risking our own lives but lives of numerous others as well.

Lets understand our responsibility toward the society, our family and to ourselves and behave responsibly. Lets take an initiative towards ending this menace.

We have heard about quite a few reputed captive BPOs putting their companies on the block.These are being acquired by other outsourcing companies and the reasons that these BPOs are quoting is the sqeezing margins.

The result of these news is that people are panicking, employees from these organizations are quitting their jobs and looking for other options.Some of these news are rumors. But it is indeed a fact that there are certain organizations that are contemplating, selling their businesses to other outsourcing companies because of the reducing margins.But this doesn’t mean that prospects in a captive BPOs are limited now.

What employees of these captive BPOs need to understand is that even if there is an acquisition happening, their jobs are not at stake.They are secure and will continue in their positions with the only change that they would now be working under a new brand name.Hence employees working in these organizations need not panic and resign from their jobs.

For people who are aspiring to join captive BPOs, you may still keep your options open and look for opening in these companies because there is nothing to loose.You only stand to gain by working in these organizations.

A career path in a BPO is the most incomplete information that even the employee working in the organization has.It is not because this information is inaccessible or,unavailable, rather it is because of the unwillingness shown by the employee to extract this information.Unlike in the other industries, growth in a BPO is fast and avenues are many.In the other industries, a promotion is something that happens once in 5-6 years and the options available to you are limited.Hence the need to gather information is very less, Whereas in a BPO you have multiple options of growth. Lets discuss what these options are.

Before we understand the growth options we have, lets discuss what are the departments in a normal BPO, where you can look forward to move into.A BPO has departments like the following that would provide employees an option of growth.

• Call center Operations (CCO, in short)
• Hiring
• Process engineering
• Data analysis
• Quality assurance

Certain BPOs have a hierarchy in grades and certain other in designations.We will only discuss the ones that have a hierarchy in designations for a clearer understanding.
The normal hierarchy is as follows:

• Head of department
• Manager – Operations
• Dy.Manager – Operations
• Asst. Manager – Operations
• Team leaders
• Asst. Team leaders
• Sr.Representatives
• Representatives

There are other hierarchies that are specific to certain organizations and we would not include them here.Some of the above mentioned designations like , “Dy.Manager” and “Asst.Team Leader” are again designations that doesn’t feature in certain BPOs.

Growth to a Sr.Representative is not based on interviews but is based on the tenure in an organization.But all other designations have an interview-based screening.A dedicated and hard-working employee with the minimum required skills should be promoted to the position of a team leader in about an year.This will again depend on individual performances. Similarly the growth to an Asst.Manager should again take another year and a half. The best part of all this is that positions like Asst.Manager and Manager-Operations involve handling huge teams and the employees are groomed to develop into these roles.These kind of grooming and learning is something that has made the BPOs stand-out from the rest of the industries.

Almost all of the departments will have a similar kind of hierarchy except that there would be no roles called “Representatives” and “Sr.Representatives” there. What are the functions of these departments could be a point of discussion in another post.

The news of major players in the BPO industry venturing into Domestic services came as a breath of fresh air for all BPO aspirants who hated working night shifts.Intelenet is already a major player in the domestic space.

That all these organizations are offering similar facilities as that of other International BPOs is what is interesting.Also in addition to the fact that, one would not have to work night shifts, fluency and accent would also be a relief in these BPOs because they are majorly catering the Indian market.

With this, the fear that the BPO sector would die a death like the medical transcription industry has been put to rest. After all who would deny the fact that consumerism is here to stay and that the Indian market is becoming more and more customer oriented.