BPO Bottom Line: Better English
By Debbie J. Pepito

With around 50,000 agents needed by call centers every year until 2010 and only 3 to 8 percent of applicants passing requirements owing to a lack of English skills, the president of John Clements Consultants Inc. Carol Dominguez said a national effort to address the “English proficiency gap” is critically vital.

She said that if that lack is not met adequately, the industry—in which the Philippines is second only to India—will gravely suffer and outsourcing business will go elsewhere.

As a stop-gap measure, she suggested, “We need to train the hear-hires and make them good enough to get hired.”

Dominguez was speaking at a general membership meeting of the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) at the Manila Polo Club in Makati on Tuesday, March 1, 2006. “We need to train trainers so they can pass their expertise on to more people who can, in turn, train other trainers.”

John Clements is a consultancy firm providing recruitment, outsourcing, management and training solutions to corporations in the Philippines and key foreign markets.

Dominguez estimates the industry needs to hire around 50,000 agents annually from 2006 to 2010. She added that through various private sector initiatives, provinces like Camarines Sur and the CALABARZON area have already produced 5,000 call center agents this year, but that this is still too small.

The BPA/P is a private-sector-led organization representing sectors of IT-enabled services in the country, such as contact center and transcription services, animation, software development, back-office processing and computer-aided engineering design.

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This article was originally published in the Business Mirror, Wednesday, March 2, 2006, page A1.