Teletech eyes bridging academe-industry gap

Banking so much on its people as drivers of their growth as an international business process outsourcing company, Teletech is eyeing to provide support to the academe sector to ensure that skills of graduates will match the specific needs of the industry.

Currently, Teletech is active in school and university fairs to attract potential talent pool to enter their company. Tracy P. Guillermo, the company’s newly assigned site manager in its Cebu facility disclosed that so far trainings for communication and career development are still being discussed on the pipeline in coordination with TESDA.

Guillermo said that the trainings will be offered to public high schools to better equip them with the basic skills needed in the contact center industry. She also added that some schools are approaching them to explore the possibility of making call center a short term course in their curriculums.

She said that so far they have already established academe partnerships with Cebu-based schools such as the University of Southern Philippines (USP), University of San Carlos (USC) and University of San Jose-Recolletos (USJR).

“We have tried reviewing their curriculums and made recommendations for their English-based subjects. Interestingly, schools are already looking at technological courses and other exploratory approaches so that their students can be employed in the industry right away,” said Guillermo.

Aside from collaborating with the academe, they are also working together with the local government sectors.

In fact just recently, they offered Mandaue City vice-Mayor Carlo Fortuna training for public school teachers as they believe that helping both the private and public schools is a short-term and a long term goal that will enable them to meet the challenges demanded by their own clients.

In terms of their hiring process, Guillermo said that they are following a visionary process as they are providing all the necessary tools to guide their applicants and assess their skills appropriately.

 So far in their Cebu facility, Teletech is receiving applicant traffic of about 60 to 80 applicants daily and they are expecting this rate to increase this graduation season.

Guillermo said that they have a high percentage of hiring for the whole year with 15 percent. And as for benchmarking, their head rate is about two to three percent and Guillermo stressed they are expecting to increase hit rate to 20 to 25 percent this year.

With already 10 facilities all over the country including four sites in the Visayas regions, Guillermo stressed that, “We are growing in Vis-Min through strengthening our networks and employing the so-called location strategy by bringing jobs to the people.”

In their 800-seat Cebu facility, Teletech is now in full capacity but they are still aiming to grow their operations as Guillermo revealed that this year they will be expanding their line of business to also offer non-voice services for some of their clients.

 Teletech is a leading global business process outsourcing (BPO) company that provides a full range of front-end to back-end office outsourced solutions. In Cebu they are serving three major clients from diverse industries offering technical support, airline reservation and customer service.