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BPOs visiting biz schools for talent(Ecomonic Times, The (India) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 14--MUMBAI, India -- A dearth of skilled professionals has forced BPOs to look for other avenues to acquire talent, one of them being campuses. For years, corporates and banks have been visiting campuses to recruit students for various operations, but BPOs have emerged as new visitors on the block. BPOs like Genpact, Accenture and vCustomer are visiting campuses of top B-schools and recruiting management professionals for high-end work like analytics, research and legal processes. Also, niche BPOs like Hurix Technologies and Aranca, a Mumbai-based BPO specialising in financial research, have started visiting campuses of top-notch B-schools. Piyush Mehta, senior VP-HR, Genpact, says that they recruit freshers for high-end jobs like F&A and analytics. This year, Genpact has recruited around 45-50 students and they plan to recruit 50 more before the recruitment season ends. Genpact has visited the Delhi School of Economics, FMS, IISc, XLRI and IIMs. The organisation has also hired students from Columbia University and Ivy League. Hurix Technologies, a Mumbai-based publishing outsourcing and e-learning company, hires engineers for technical writing, literature students for creative writing and graphic designers for visual creation. Anand Lunia, executive VP-operations, says that the e-learning industry provides faster growth opportunities than any other industry. Hurix visits Presidency College, Women's Christian College and Loyola in Chennai, besides Sophia College, XLRI, Symbiosis and IIMs. Similarly, Aranca visits campuses like ICFAI and SP Jain, besides the usual IIMs. They have also recruited students from Mumbai and Pune universities. "We have recruited nearly 5-10 students from each of ICFAI campuses (Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad)," says Madhusudan Rajagopalan, head operations -- India, Aranca. Pune-based vCustomer visits ISB, Hyderabad to hire students, but prefers those with prior experience for jobs like insurance, claims processing and back office operations. The advantage of hiring students from the campuses, says Mr Mehta, is that they are equipped with theoretical knowledge and know their job, so there is no need to put them through long training hours, which helps the company save cost, besides acquiring qualified professionals. Genpact is hiring 1,000 people per month on an average, of which 100-150 are picked up from the campuses. "Campus hiring has become critical for us, and we have very aggressive campus recruitment plans," he adds. The real challenge for BPOs is paying higher salaries. Corporates offer high salary packages which BPOs can't match. An entry-level employee without any experience can expect to be paid Rs 5,50,000 per annum, plus the joining bonus of Rs 1,50,000, while a candidate with 1-2 years experience will be paid Rs 8 lakh per annum plus joining bonus. In the e-learning segment, management graduates start from Rs 3-6 lakh per annum while literature graduates are offered Rs 1,50,000 at the entry-level' in the second year, the salary jumps by Rs 1 lakh. However, Madan Srinivasan, head-business development, vCustomer, says: "BPOs are offering packages at par with the corporates if not better." The attrition rate in the e-learning segment is as high as 30-40 percent. At BPOs, which handle high-end work, it is 25 percent, and at KPOs like Aranca, it is less than 10 percent. |