2007: Some shine, some whine for BPO
Contentment Calling
Overall BPO employee satisfaction improved in 2007, but longer travel time to work and unearthly hours raised stress levels, says a recent survey.
Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) firms improved the overall employee satisfaction level in 2007 even though stress levels continued to be high. Travel time to work and back, and unearthly work hours were the biggest contributors to the unusually high stress levels, according to the recent fourth Dataquest-IDC BPO E-Sat survey 2007.

Hello, hinterland
Rising real estate costs and high attrition rates in big cities are forcing BPO units to look at alternatives, with companies such as Satyam Computer heading toward rural areas in a bid to maintain their productivity. Satyam, Lason and Datamation have already set up their business process outsourcing centres in remote places such as Ethakota and Jalli Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh.

Wanted: Housewives for banking, IT, retail jobs
Rupa Jha
Being a woman with children and a home to look after was considered a career-dampener not so long ago, but housewives are now being increasingly wooed by big guns such as Standard Chartered Bank and Infosys in an array of sectors like software, retail, banking and BPOs.

Class apart
Now, branded coaching centres for school kids
Snehesh Alex Philip
With tuitions becoming the norm for schoolchildren these days, corporate firms are now coming up with branded tutorial centres to tap the multi-crore school tutorial business.

Bits & bytes
Talent crunch may shrink KPO biz
The KPO market in India would stagnate at $ 10.5 billion against the projected $ 15 billion by 2012 due to a dearth of talented professionals in the absence of relevant institutions for imparting KPO skills in India, industry body Assocham has said.

3 Indians among 32  US Rhodes scholars
Three Indian origin students are among five South Asians in the US who have won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship, which provides for two to three years of study at Oxford University in England. They are among the 32 American Rhodes scholars announced recently by the scholarship trust.

Smart Skills
Fast forward
Usha Albuquerque
Satish is a Project Manager with a large software development company. With an MCA, seven years work experience and an excellent track record, Satish is doing well in his career. But, he feels, it is not growing fast enough. He would like to move to the next step up the ladder, but this is not happening. It used to be that if you excelled in your current job, you automatically moved into your boss’s job. But this is no longer the case.

Career Hotline
Set to soar
Pervin Malhotra
Q I am 19 years old and I love to fly. I read everywhere that the aviation industry is facing a shortage of commercial pilots. Am I too young to become a pilot at this age?
— Mayank Tripathi
A No, you are not. The civil aviation sector faces an acute shortage of pilots which is causing private airlines like Jet Airways and Kingfisher to recruit 30-40 per cent expats pilots in their crew. Flying schools minus sufficient equipment and instructors, co-pilots who are younger than 20 years and the large number of foreign pilots — many of whom are unfamiliar with the local topography and climate are symptoms of this skills shortage.

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