However, to get candidates to reach BPO levels of French or Spanish speaking skills, the cost of training would be too high. The solution to tapping global opportunities from non-English speaking countries could perhaps be globalising BPO companies, whereby Indian BPO companies set up shop in countries like Morocco and Mauritius.

GOT TO GO DEEP
The question is, is the industry getting what it requires? Is our talent pool relevant enough to sustain a competitive edge in this ever growing sector? Yes and no! While the large pool of graduate level English speaking populace make a good choice for the entry level customer support functionalities, much more industry relevant `skilling' needs to be done if they were to cash upon the newer possibilities thrown by the industry. There exists an acute scarcity of professionals who are equipped with the necessary domain knowledge to cater to specific verticals such as banking, insurance, telecom, retail, manufacturing, etc. They also lack traits like global exposure, cultural sensitivity, knowledge of the work environment of clients, and proper experience in information security. Feels Tarun, "Trainers today place a lot more impetus on voicebased training. The trainers are more inclined on giving greater thrust on language but there are a host of other major factors which needs to be addressed. These would be more on the work, etiquettes, ethics and data/information security to mention a few"

As a result the industry is building up its own training resources. Says Nagarajan, "Currently not all training companies have the expertise in BPO training requirements. We find that at best they provide very basic, generic training. Hence at 24/7 Customer has a strong in-house training team."

Most importantly, if the possibilities for India to explore untouched BPO markets are rising, the paucity of personnel equipped with foreign language skills such as fluency in French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian, etc are paralysing the possibility.

Added to this, despite the boom there is no pre-job training on BPO. the current system of education are yet to provide some of the necessary skills for BPO at the graduate/post-graduate level. Resources produced may have a strong conceptual/theoretical background but often lack communication and vocation-specific skills and the creative drive or specific regulatory certifications required by clients in foreign countries.

COPING UP TO THE HIGHEST POSSIBILITY
There are a number of immediate exigencies that the industry should take note of. Proper understanding of the changing industry dynamics and then taking logical step towards attaining the desired manpower is a must. The first logical step here could be reaching out to the right audience, taking BPO jobs to the ones who need it. For instance, the player could look at offering the opportunity to youth from smaller cities who have fewer employment opportunities and who would probably look at the job as a long-term option.

There is also a need to charting out a clear cut desired candidate profile and qualifications. Hire for a balance of jobpersonality fit and likelihood of staying on for a long tenure. Have more suited training design and qualification criteria to become team leaders management skills, team management skills, and understanding of metrics and data analysis.

Further, a majority of the BPO incentives are based on `good performance'. However, the industry is yet to define what really `good performance' is. This definition should be incorporated at agent and team lead levels and design performance appraisal systems in sync with it.

A proper nexus between training institutes, placement agencies and the industry is an important pre-requisite here. Unfortunately till date, we do not even have proper training institutes which can support the growing needs of the BPO industry on a proactive basis. Says Tarun, "In fact it would be good if the industry starts setting certain training best practices and the institutes follow the same to deliver human assets as future human capital. Training institutes need not just have mere expansion in terms of manpower or greater people but need to give more importance on quality of the human capital and the processes it follows." As of now it is the industry that is fulfilling the industry that is fulfilling the need for rigorous training through their in house programmes before the candidates hit the floor. Even experienced employees go through mandatory trainings at regular intervals. More important, the trainers are trained and assessed/monitored by the experts on a very regular basis.

Another immediate need is to contain attrition through a suite of initiatives like enhancing the scope for career development within the company, look for a balanced growth (not just pick up a contract because a customer is willing to offshore), ensure work climate is conducive to a holistic development of a member. Here, campus contact programmes which explain to students on a one on one basis what careers in BPO are all about , seminars at college campuses where some senior students who have made successful BPO careers come and talk about how they made it big in the BPO business need to be initiated to build a long term positive image in the minds of a student.

Taking note of the rising in labour costs, and the pressures on the availability of talent due to rapid growth in demand; NASSCOM designed a framework, which will help industry to actively negate the risks mitigation issues, especially in the area of industry relevant BPO human resource pool. With the motive of making India a trusted sourcing destination and keeping in mind the fact that the key concerns of overseas customers is employee reference check, NASSCOM is exploring the concept of a `National Skills Registry of IT Employees' in this industry. This would operate on a shared services model and will be administered by a credible third party. It has also come up with an executive development programme for assessing and certifying talent with the objective of creating an employable talent pool with benchmarked requisite skills and architecting an effective `Assessment and Certification Framework'. The programme would also take care of frontline management issues like low level of expertise at frontline (lower-middle) management, in managing and sustaining an ITES-BPO operation.