The Real Story-A BPO life

My career in a BPO now spans more than 5 years and I have learnt a lot in these 5 years. Starting from the basics to the specialized in computers, leadership skills, management skills, oratory skills, public speaking skills, and the list could be never-ending. This would not be a great thing for someone, but it is indeed great to learn all this in a span of 5 years. Before I joined a BPO, my little experience and what my father taught me made me think that a career, if you are not a doctor, chartered accountant, advocate or, into any other profession, would be joining a company at a junior level and slowly progressing to reach a middle management level in the next 25 years and you retire as a manager at a middle management level. But then the time required to learn management skills and for people to recognize these skills in you was more than 20 years, unless you were exceptionally good. It also meant that, management skills were something that you learnt with experience and exposure, not something that can be taught or, groomed.
But BPOs have changed this thought. You do not have to be in a management institute to learn management skills rather you would learn it in a better way in a BPO. In addition to that, if you think you need a qualification almost all good Companies in this sector would offer you a chance to enroll and study it, some of them even bearing the expenditure of a Rs. 90,000 course.
But then the real story is, not a lot of people know about this. What they know is a story as is shown in a cheap movie like, “A life in a METRO” or, as in a book like “A night at a call center”. We prefer to see these or, read these, enjoy at the cheapness of the content and go home. We then would profess at the ills and devils of working in a Call Center and would keep away from anyone working in a Call Center. Only if we could ask a few questions before we brand a Call center with a culture destroying tag, we would have done some justice to this fastest growing industry.

1. Is this the only industry which witnesses these immoral acts?
2. Why is hype being created for everything that happens in a Call center?
3. Is it that only Call center employees get murdered?
4. Is it that only Call center employees drink and drive?
5. Is it that only vehicles carrying Call center employees meet with accidents?

The answers to all these would obviously be “NO”. And when the answer is “NO”, then why do we want to re-brand this industry? Why is it that a movie showing a man growing to riches from rags on a BPO job, not made?
The reason is obvious.
We human beings hate everything that grows at a faster pace than we grow at. We hate to see the next door neighbor earning 3 times more than what we earn with a much lesser qualification. We hate to accept that our child will still get a respectable and good career, even if he is not amongst the brilliant of kids, because the society would compare our children with their doctor and engineer children.
The choice is your. You have a choice to drive your children to a suicide because of the pressure of studies, or help him groom to build a career, a career which is like no other.
Is “A life in a METRO” and “A night at a call center” the real story or, would you prefer to hear it from someone who has gained a lot from a Call Center? The choice is to everyone who would want a similar gain from this industry.