Call centres court campus 'untouchables'

MUMBAI: The phrase ''campus interview'' is graduating from the narrow domain of Bschools and technical institutes. Breaching an unwritten caste code, call centres will visit city colleges next year to recruit students from English, History, Sociology and other arts streams.
Last few years of experience has taught the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry that while commerce and technical students make up the long queues to their employment desks, fine arts and social science are better equipped to handle the job.
Call centre work requires a firm grasp on English, glib articulation and cutting-edge accents. Most arts students score over others in these areas. "We are expanding our target population," said Aniruddha Joshi, board director and head of strategy of Zenta, a top- rung call centre.
"Students of fine arts and liberal arts often have better presentation skills." Zenta has identified 10 city colleges for 2004 summer recruitment.
These colleges include SIES, Khalsa and Jhunjhunwala.A couple of other call centres are also planning such a move, but have not come out with an official blueprint so far. "In my 30 years of teaching, I have not seen employers coming to the campus to recruit arts students," said R. Gopalkrishnan, the vice principal and head of the department of economics at SIES College of Arts Science and Commerce.
"It is a very welcome move." This means arts students can look forward to decent salaries, he said. "Most teaching jobs in colleges would fetch them around Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000 to begin with, while call centre starting salaries are around Rs 10,000-Rs 11,000," Mr Gopalkrishnan said.
Arts students, who often are looked upon in middle-class India as people who have run out of academic and career options, are elated at the lucrative option.
"With his friends getting through engineering and medical exams after higher secondary, students joining arts are often made to feel useless by their families and society in general," said Shourish Chakravarty, a BA student at Elphinstone College. "The changing attitude of employers reflects a new India where there are more equal opportunities and better assessment of skills."
Mr Joshi reckons that the term ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) has so far turned off arts students from looking at call centres as a career.
He says Business Service Outsourcing is a more appropriate term, since most call centre jobs do not involve technology at all. "It is like calling writing a pen-enabled service," he said.