The call center agent. It's probably the one work that many graduates and job-seeking professionals can hope to land in an employment sector that is severely strained.

The good news is: the demand for workers is much, much greater than the number of applicants. Now for the bad news: not everyone may find himself cut out for the job and may move on only for a few months.

There are rewards and perks for the hardworking, patient call center worker, to be sure. The starting pay is a few thousand pesos higher than what one would normally get working in another industry.

Incentives "which can mean bonuses" are given to employees who fulfill certain requirements, e.g. they have an impeccable track record of punctuality and virtually no absences. Lest anyone think that the position is a dead-end job, call center agents can climb a career path up the company ladder.

Because the industry itself is fairly new, many workers learn on the job and promotion is grown from within; supervisors and team leaders generally have come up from the ranks and, after having proved their mettle in the daily grind, now enjoy a greater share of responsibilities and, with them, greater compensation.

The high demand for call center agents makes its job vacancies accessible to a graduate with any degree. Because English fluency and communication skills are non-negotiable skills required from every employee, a degree in English, Languages, Communications, Liberal Arts, and Journalism would certainly help.

However, a graduate or professional with a degree in a seemingly unrelated field like Accounting and Engineering would not be turned away at the recruitment door. What employers are looking for are certain core skills in an individual that can be tapped and developed "specific work attitudes".

The call center working environment thrives on pressure and can tax one's patience. The customers it certainly services generally live in the US or in some other Western country thousands of miles across the equator.

The agent tasked to deal with these customers handle all sorts of calls, from answering questions about a certain product, noting down complaints, or troubleshooting or crafting solutions when a specific service does not work. Unlike the typical customer service center in the Philippines, the call center agent will find himself dealing with foreign clients again most of whom are Americans.

That means that he does not just need to have a firm knowledge of the product or service he is handling, he must also be able to communicate in a way that American customers understand. Call center agents are trained to speak in American-English, and not in Pinoy-styled English or Taglish. They not only have to be familiar with American idioms, but they have to be able to understand what an American housewife needs for her home, the kind of car her businessman husband drives to work, or what her fifteen-year-old son does for rest and relaxation.

A familiarity with American geography and cultural mores would help them get into the mindset of the American consumer who wants to make his every cent count. Add to this is the usual pressure that comes with the customer service territory. The operative phrase here is unflappable coolness. Call center agents have to remain unruffled and calm as the customers at the other side of the world rattle off their disappointments, harass them with a thousand and one questions, or in some extreme cases, act rude and unfriendly.

Finally, some call center agents have to deal with the graveyard shift. Many of them have to drop their weekend gimmiks or nights out with the barkada to be able to keep a job that requires them to be at their desk from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Remember, our evenings here translate to working days in the US. It is during our night shift that the American customers that the call center agent has to reach are awake and available, puttering in their homes or offices. The call center industry is here to stay, since more and more US companies are outsourcing their telemarketing, medical transcription, accounting and payroll, and customer service divisions to offshore facilities in Asia.

In the past couple of years, the Philippine call center industry has seen a 100 percent growth, employing about 15,000 people in various companies that are servicing Fortune 500 corporations around the globe. If we can keep on recruiting and fielding quality, hardworking agents, we should be able to get another 24,000 jobs from now to next year. And that's just scratching the surface. Industry experts estimate that the US will unload another 1.5 million jobs in the next seven years.

On a final note, we do need a lot of applicants for open positions in the call center sector.

Interested parties can e-mail us their resumes at feedback@jobsdb.com.ph. [Jayjay Viray is the general manager of JobsDB Phils, Inc. For comments and feedback, email feedback@jobsdb.com.ph.]

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Good pay in good night jobs

By Anne Genuino

For almost a century, the Philippines has been sending professionals to work in the US: architects, doctors, therapists, nurses—even music teachers. In a way, BPO industry—the call-center business in particular—is just the next wave. This is what call centers and other BPO companies are communicating to Filipinos—that they don’t have to take up courses that would eventually take them abroad, because there really are equally enriching work in the Philippines. There were 60,000 local call-center seats by end-2005, increasing by 50 percent 2004’s 40,000.

But what makes call centers and other BPO companies attract Filipinos? You guessed it—the fat paycheck.

A regular call-center agent provides a variety of customer and employee-care services to Americans and other nationalities: handling call-in inquiries, giving technical support, sending e-mail, doing online chat, giving travel tips and consumer services. There are over 120,000 Filipinos answering queries in Manila, doing work—a minimum of P13,000 ($254.27 based on a $51.125 exchange rate) a month—that generally pays better than bookkeeping in a bank or a similar white-collar employment, which pays around P8,000 ($156.09) a month for an entry-level position in a local company.

Other BPO companies, like those that do data transcription, legal transcription, medical transcription, animation and software development, offer even more attractive pay packages. An entry-level position at a data transcription company, as a legal or medical transcriptionist, pays P12,000 ($234.71) a month; an animator and software developers receive a relatively higher monthly pay—P16,000 (about $312.95).

Apart from the attractive rates, call centers also give their employees other benefits—continuous training, food and transportation allowance, performance and attendance bonuses. No wonder Filipinos flock to call centers and other BPO recruitment offices.

An average Filipino worker’s paycheck is meager compared to the pay, perks and benefits offered by call centers. A bank teller receives a minimum of P7,500; a public-school teacher gets about P8,000 at the very least; a data analyst receives around P8,500.

Jon and Andrea, both 32 (not their real names), husband and wife, work in a Makati call center as directory assistance operators. They just got in last March. Jon used to work as a real-estate agent while Andrea was a full-time housewife. The couple have 3 children, aged 5, 3 and 1.

“I was getting tired of approaching people persuading them to buy houses. My monthly pay depended on how well I did with the selling,” Jon said. He adds that it was his friend who persuaded him to try his luck in a call center. “At first I was hesitant particularly because of the graveyard shift. But I had no choice. Stretching the peso had become very difficult for me and my family.”

Jon wasn’t happy with the idea of Andrea also applying for a call-center job. “The same with Jon, I had no choice. I needed to do this because our kids are growing. Good thing my mom lives with us. I am still adjusting. With the call-center job, even if I want to play with my kids in the morning I can’t—I am just too exhausted.”

Karen, a 22-year-old call-center agent who once considered becoming a lawyer, says her friends ask her, “What do you do?” I just sit around, talk to the customer with my headset on. That’s it,” she says. “They ask me, ‘How much do they pay?’ Secret.” Is it glamorous? “Well, it is—mainly because of the pay,” she said with a laugh. “If you’re not working for a call center, you’re not in.”

Jason (not his real name), 28, has been working ePerformax for nearly a year. “Most of the time, I feel isolated,” he says. “You can’t tell your friends what your day was like, because they are either sleeping or at work. But I enjoy what I do, even if it’s at the graveyard shift. Besides, the pay is good, way better than my old job.”

He adds, “Staying awake at night is not a problem. There’s a lot of irate callers to keep me awake. It’s a good-paying good night job.”