BPO! Yup, this was the day that I was going to join the BPO industry!

I had never thought that I’d ever become a part of this industry, atleast never as a caller. I am an engineer after all. But then don’t they say that life is what happens to you when you are busy making plans…

Well don’t get me wrong folks. I’m not one of those with ‘external locus of control’. Man! It feels great to be on the right side of these management jargons! Let me take you a few months back and than you’ll know what led me to this day…

December last year… I had just completed my penultimate semester. More importantly, the MBA season, as we had started calling it, hadn’t gone as planned. CAT had not proved to be a friendly beast. Raymond had had a worse CAT exam than me and was already talking about CAT-2008 never gives up, does he?! And hence the terminology- MBA season… bloody football fanatic! Screwed up his CAT but did that affect is enthusiasm for EPL? NO!! I had lost my appetite and this guy…

January came. A few more exams. I managed a couple of calls. Pretty decent ones at that. To cut the chase- Couldn’t convert!

So it was an IT company that I’d be joining after completing engineering. Not bad at all. Everyone , barring a few who had had a successful MBA season, does exactly that. Right? Wrong!

Throw in the sub prime crisis and what you have yourself is a global economic mess. How can someone’s inability to pay back his home loan affect the life of a fresh engineering graduate in India? Well it does. IT market saw slowdown. What should’ve been a seamless transition from college to office turned into months long wait for the jobs that had already been offered.

And so I had a choice. Sit at home and do nothing, do something worthwhile means technically the same thing once or the BPO industry…

Money, the associated independence, new experience, associated work experience, would have been a fool had I made any other choice. For all those who think that it was unethical of me to join a company for just two or maybe three months…well, that will be answered in a future post.