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applicants need good English proficiency |
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Job
applicants to need English proficiency proof soon?
Date:
10/27/2004 10:46:11 AM
Source: BusinessWorld
By: Anna Barbara L. Lorenzo
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With Filipinos' skill in
speaking and writing in English on the decline, the Makati Business Club now wants
companies to require job applicants to submit a certificate in English proficiency.
"We are suggesting this to local firms, particularly to large corporations.
By next year, we'd like them to require applicants to take an English test," said
the club's executive director, Guillermo Luz.
Certification, however,
is not for free. The Test of English for International Communication can be taken
for $20 or around P1,120.
Mr. Luz said speaking in English was crucial
particularly for those in the tourism and information technology industries who
usually deal directly with foreign clients.
While the Philippines does
not require job applicants to submit a certificate in English proficiency, other
Asian countries have been requiring it for more than 15 years, said Robert Woodhead,
director of the Center for Professional Assessment in Thailand.
Countries
such as Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, and Thailand are even going
back to the use of English as the language of instruction in public schools.
Mr. Woodhead said companies should dictate their need for a work force with
a good command of the language.
"English is a skill one can measure and
it is a demand that the supply side should be able to provide. Companies need
to say that they require employees with a higher level English proficiency," he
said.
He added the government should also ensure that educators were
providing the proper English skills to students.
"The standard has, over
time, deteriorated in the Philippines but not such as that it can't be brought
back into a higher level," Mr. Woodhead said.
The Education department
has admitted that it needs to train public school teachers in English, but it
also said such a program would be expensive. It trained 10% of its workforce for
PhP450 million, in excess of the PhP230-million budget of the department last
year.
The department has also said that if its budget would remain the
same, it would be able to train only 2,000 out of the total 450,000 teachers annually.
English proficiency is currently among the assets of Filipino workers
in search of jobs with offshore companies outsourcing their technical and customer
service needs.
Data from Avaya, Inc., a business solutions provider for
contact centers, showed that the United States was expected to outsource about
400,000 seats for offshore customer service until 2007. The Philippines belongs
to the top choices for outsourcing aside from China and India.
The prospect
for growth for the business process outsourcing industry is backed by the International
Data Corp., Gartner Group, and the Contact Center Association of the Philippines,
which forecast an increase in the number of contact centers to 102 next year from
86 this year.
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Only
3% Get Call Center Positions in Philippines TMCnet News
Manila Standard Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) FEWER than three of every
100 new college graduates are hired in call centers and other business process
outsourcing (BPO) companies every year due to their failure to pass competitive
qualifying exams. Industry data showed that of the 400,000 new graduates
who look for work annually, only 11,526 or 2.89 percent are accepted in BPO companies
and call centers.
This has raised concern that the Philippines will
be unable to sustain the growth of the $10 billion sector because of the lack
of qualified workers.
"Most fail because they fail to understand
the requirement of global job interviews, testing and process. Secondly, the spoken
English becomes a challenge, in terms of conversational fluency, tone and accent,"
said Jim Santiago, president and CEO of the John F. Kennedy Center Foundation-Philippines.
Unless the hiring rate in BPO companies and call centers improves soon,
Santiago warned that the Philippines will be unable to sustain the boom in outsourced
services and lose its competitiveness to other Asian countries.
The
solution is to prepare fresh graduates for a job in a BPO company or call center
by providing them quality training that will significantly increase their chances
of getting hired, he said.
"The spoken English can be cured over
a relatively short period of time. The workforce needs a bit more seasoning in
English but they are trainable and very literate, possess excellent domain knowledge
and superior work ethics," he added.
Training programs conducted
by JFK Center Foundation showed that an 80-hour training period distributed over
30 days can increase the average hiring rate of BPO firms and call centers from
2.89 percent to as high as 53 percent.
He said the hiring rate improved
as the training prepared the students in terms of English proficiency, accent
reduction, problem solving, analytical skills, decision making and execution,
and customer satisfaction and experience.
At present, JFK Center Foundation
is working with universities and colleges to develop their curriculum for one-year,
two-year, four-year and even MBA programs in BPO and Contact Center Entrepreneurship
and Management.
The JFK Foundation has already started working with
local government institutions and state and private universities.
Meanwhile,
JFK Center Foundation and American solutions provider Five9 recently tied up to
ensure the steady growth of the information technology sector in the Philippines
by developing a cottage call center industry.
Five9 is an international
call center solutions provider that has chosen the Philippines as the site of
its regional headquarters in Southeast Asia. In 2005, the company introduced Virtual
Contact Center, which allows small organizations to start a call center with minimal
capital.
The new partnership seeks to assist the development of 400
to 500 small to medium-scale companies in the provinces that will generate around
88,000 jobs.
"Our goal is to promote the Philippines aggressively
as the premier choice for the global customer care capital of the world,"
Santiago said.
"With the development of low-cost and state-of-the-art
technology such as Five9, we will be able to help differentiate Filipino BPO centers
with higher skills, excellent or superior customer satisfaction and customer experience,
high velocity delivery, and specialized value and increased knowledge," Santiago
said.
He said that new low-cost technology would enable BPO industry
to create another 90,000 jobs over the next three years to the 100,000 already
in place and expand the business by $5 billion.
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