Posted on 04/06/2011 8:57:28 AM PDT by throwback
BANGALORE, India—Call-center company 24/7 Customer Pvt. Ltd. is desperate to find new recruits who can answer questions by phone and email. It wants to hire 3,000 people this year. Yet in this country of 1.2 billion people, that is beginning to look like an impossible goal.
So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that the company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants.
In India, Doubts Gather Over Rising Giant's Course India projects an image of a nation churning out hundreds of thousands of students every year who are well educated, a looming threat to the better-paid middle-class workers of the West. Their abilities in math have been cited by President Barack Obama as a reason why the U.S. is facing competitive challenges.
Yet 24/7 Customer's experience tells a very different story. Its increasing difficulty finding competent employees in India has forced the company to expand its search to the Philippines and Nicaragua. Most of its 8,000 employees are now based outside of India.
In the nation that made offshoring a household word, 24/7 finds itself so short of talent that it is having to offshore.
"With India's population size, it should be so much easier to find employees," says S. Nagarajan, founder of the company. "Instead, we're scouring every nook and cranny."
India's economic expansion was supposed to create opportunities for millions to rise out of poverty, get an education and land good jobs. But as India liberalized its economy starting in 1991 after decades of socialism, it failed to reform its heavily regulated education system.
Business executives say schools are hampered by overbearing bureaucracy and a focus on rote learning rather...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys," says Vijay Thadani, chief executive of New Delhi-based NIIT Ltd. India, a recruitment firm that also runs job-training programs for college graduates lacking the skills to land good jobs.
I dealt with a programmer from China who had a masters in Computer Science yet couldn't understand relational data structures to save herself. The above statement fits her to a 'T'.
Their strategy: Memorize to pass the test.
yeah but chinese hackers are pretty darn good
And because they are paid peanuts, they’ll get jobs.
That bit about rote and cramming is entirely true. Before I found my passion (Economics/Investing, now a BS Econ) I just crammed for tests and didn’t learn a darn thing (Previous Poli-Sci major). Now that I am in an actual major I care about, I am learning a great deal because A) I care about the material and B) If I do not know the material, I will not get a job in my desired industry.
The average college student in America is the same way. Crams for the test, then goes back to drinking and chasing a**
Same here. Some imports were very good, but we also had a woman from China with a Masters in CS that couldn’t make her own lunch. She needed help on every project, and invariably you ended up doing 90% of it yourself.
I could pretty much say the same about a lot of fresh American graduates I happen to interview.
same here in the US....
Hire them anyway. I am getting used to communicating with Indian call center workers who get confused when you say “zero” rather than “o”.
It is a talent I have been developing, and would hate see go to waste.
Sounds like our educational system.
Gents, did these folks get their masters in their respective home countries or here in the U.S.?
Over the past ten or so years, I've discovered that a lot of U.S. universities are advanced degree diploma mills for foreigners. They're matched up with a U.S. student and they sign on to the American's doctoral thesis's, and piggy-back to their degree.
I've worked with two East African "PhD"s, who literally should have been scratching around the dirt for insects to eat, but instead were making six figures (for filling a quota) and one from China who'd be more effective if he had a giant off switch on his back to keep him out of the way.
Rote memorization is excellent. It is the best tool for learning at an early age. It’s absolutely horrendous that there is a general attitude against memorization.
You are absolutely correct. I see the same deficiencies in my international information technology students as I see in my american students. The bureaucracy comment mirrors our own educational system.
I have quite a few international student in graduate classes who obtained their “Masters” degree in their home country who are now pursuing a graduate degree in this country.
mst grads in us typ lik dis so wtf
mst grads in us typ lik dis so wtf
Ha!
I know a Chinese PhD that is a DBA and he too can barely grasp SQL.
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