Call centers, once the symbol of India’s economic boom, are now being failed to attract the young graduates to join the BPO industry. Over the past ten years or more, the BPO industry had attracted young graduates by offering comparatively high salaries in the call center jobs. Several call centers attracted thousands of applicants across the country in those years. Now, the scenario has been completely changed and college graduates and young job seekers have started rejecting the job offers in call centers across the country.

The entry of several foreign companies in different sectors in India and the Indian companies spreading network across the country has resulted in the generation of different kinds of job opportunities in other sectors in India. These new job opportunities have the scope of development while the call centers jobs have less scope of development for the young skilled professionals.

For young graduates in India, there are so many opportunities other than the call center jobs of sleepless nights serving customers of other countries. They have better job opportunities in other fields with better career advancement opportunities now.

Dr. A. Sankara Reddy, head of Sri Venkateswara College, New Delhi has said that the college has banned call center recruitments from campus. Some other colleges have also decided to take the similar decision on the demand of the students. If the trends would be applied by other colleges across the country, it would be like a killing step for the BPO industry in India.

At present, the IT sector, including firms running call centers and other processing works, is reportedly facing a shortage of skilled labor. According to a report, several foreign BPO companies have started opening their offices back in other developing nations. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has made it clear that IT sector would face a potential shortage of 500,000 professional employees by 2010.

The report says that the BPO industry is facing stiff competition for skilled work force from other sectors such as retail, airline and hospitality sectors in India. The companies working in these sectors are paying almost same salary packages what call centers offers to workers.

At the same time, India has also developed its share of more sophisticated outsourcing areas such as financial analysis and product research and development. The employees are getting more choices these days in comparison with some five years back.

Kiran Karnik said:

Earlier it was like either you got a high-paying, good job at a call center or no job at all. But now, lots of other options are there and they are pretty close to the call centers in terms of salary packages.

This is also being reported that the call centers’ employees started leaving their jobs because of concerns about abusive and racists remarks from customers and the long-term health effects of the jobs.

On the other hand, some of the industry experts say that the call centers jobs are still the favorite job opportunities for graduates of less prestigious colleges in India. An outsourcing firm, MphasiS, said that the company has not faced any trouble in recruiting workers till now.

However, most of the Industry experts said that with the Indian economic growth, the allure of call center jobs might weaken in coming days because of the generation of job opportunities in other sectors in the country.

Read