NAASCOM leading the way

Nasscom had recently announced its plan to conduct an all-India entrance test for job aspirants in the call centre and BPO industry to help companies in hiring people with a minimum set of skills. Lonnie Sapp, Chief Operating Officer, OfficeTiger says the pre-qualifying test would reduce recruitment time and costs. OfficeTiger, which is into outsourcing of graphics and illustrations, hire only 1.5 per cent of the 1000 applicants for jobs at the company. The industry officials, however, warned that the quality of the tests should not be lowered. They feel that the system has to be monitored and has to have a proactive dialogue with the industry and should be in a position to fine tune the process so that the glitches can be ironed out sooner than later.
India’s BPO industry growing at 50 per cent annually currently employs over 2.5 lakh people and has exports of USD 5.1 billion. NASSCOM has evolved the test model based on experiments by Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala in their BPO Skills Assessment Test (BEST), which has helped BPO firms in those states to get the right candidates, officials said. Initiatives like these will again re-establish India's credentials in the world as a hot BPO destination.