‘Career marketing’ plan for BPO personnel set

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines will be launching a career marketing program in January, in a bid to educate would-be BPO industry practitioners, and even their parents, about the jobs that they can get and the prospects for career growth in the industry.

BPAP senior executive director Gillian Joyce Virata said advertising giant Ace Saatchi & Saatchi was helping the group formulate the campaign, which would be targeted at both students and their parents.

Ms. Virata said the main goal of the program, which Ace Saatchi & Saatchi had agreed to take on for free, was to introduce students to possible jobs in the BPO industry. It also aimed to erase the notion that jobs in the BPO sector offered no prospects for growth.

“We want to create awareness and correct the misperception that BPO jobs are dead-end jobs that are beneath their education. We also want to dispel the perception that BPO jobs are risky because of the times of the shifts,” she said in an interview.

“We want the students, and even their parents, to know that the BPO industry isn’t just about call centers. There are a lot of jobs in the industry that require other special skills,” she added.

Virata related that the public was so uneducated about the BPO sector that they thought the jobs were just about making and answering calls.

What the public did not know, she said, was that BPO firms hired people with diverse skill sets to provide a wide range of high-value services.

“They don’t know that we’re hiring nurses for BPO. We have to make them aware, they need a lot of education. This will help (the nurses) decide to stay in the country,” she stated as an example.