7 Comments Add your own

• 1. David McKinnon  |  December 12th, 2008 at 3:47 pm

  Great segment. It was interesting to learn that the call center positions are so selective. I seem to hear a lot of people complain when they get someone from India on the line. With the high churn rate and minimum wage pay that you find in US call centers it may be feasible that the quality of service from an educated call center rep in India is superior to that of an American.

  Henry Ford emphasized the idea of creating value in a job. He believed that if you paid your employees a high wage then they would value their job more. They would put more effort into fulfilling their responsibilities because they would understand that their job is in high demand. I believe this is the case with Indian call centers.

• 2. Andrea Muntzel  |  December 13th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

  I really enjoyed this movie. I had no idea that so much training was done for an Indian outsourcing job. It definitely gave me a renowned admiration for those on the other end of the “technology help line.” I wasn’t surprised at the number of jobs going to India, especially not the accounting ones. The accounting firm I will work for after I graduate divides the United States into Regions (ex: Northeast, Southwest, etc.). India is ‘Region 10’. It’s the easiest way for 24 hours of work to be done each day and India is an integral part of the business.

  I noticed an inconsistency between the article and the movie. In the movie, they said that outsourcing jobs were difficult to obtain with only ‘5 out of 100’ applicants being chosen for a job. In the article, however, the fact that the companies have to go out of their way to include applicants’ families makes me believe that they are recruiting heavily for these jobs. This might be a timing difference between the movie and the article. Perhaps as time has passed, outsourcing to India has become so popular, they are looking for more people and needing to recruit more heavily.

• 3. Oscar Merlin  |  December 15th, 2008 at 10:36 am

  I was also surprised by the level of competition that the call service centers have. I guess for a second there I forgot the size of the population in India. In the video it was interesting to note how the young guy being interviewed answered the security question on your tax returns by comparing their level of security with the level of security in the United States. And he was right to do the comparison, because they have probably analyzed that they need much more stringent regulations than the US otherwise if the have even the tiniest of security scares in India they might lose all of their customers in a blink of an eye.

  Also, interesting to note was the older gentlemen saying that ‘geography is history now’, which is true with any enterprise that can send their work using the internet. But try saying that for agriculture. Try shipping a container of lettuce to India, it will never make it. I’ll be amazed at the day distance won’t matter when shipping agricultural products.

• 4. Jason Larocco  |  December 15th, 2008 at 11:04 am

  There have long been complaints about the negative affect of globalization on blue collar jobs in the U.S. As globalization starts to affect low to medium level white collar jobs it will be interesting to see how the U.S. public reacts. It is difficult to know how to position yourself in today’s job market when in many cases long term prosperity for the company you work for comes at the cost of jobs for Americans. You can say that the U.S. workforce has lost its hunger and energy, but at the same time I don’t think any of us would perform these jobs at $300-$400 a month. For that matter, I don’t think any of our Indian counter parts would do these jobs for the U.S. equivalent of $300-$400 in India.
  The WSJ article on Parental roles in the hiring process showed the need for alignment between corporate needs for educated, capable employees, and cultural expectations in India. The companies who succeed in recruiting and maintaining their recruits have done a better job aligning incentives that address the cultural concerns of the employee. Some companies have approached only the financial aspects which may win them the initial recruit, but is not as effective in keeping the employee after training. In my previous line of work several of our contractors in China also had issues with high employee turnover. Project managers and key technical personnel moved from company to company chasing higher pay and better opportunities. This made it difficult for our contractors to maintain customer relationships and consistent quality. Those companies who were able to attract and keep the best employees did a very good job aligning employee incentives with cultural needs beyond just money.

• 5. Morgan O'Hara  |  December 15th, 2008 at 7:09 pm

  Geography is history, says Wipram CEO Raman Roy. Now that’s a bold statement. And I agree. Proximity has its advantages, but can be counterbalanced by good business practices in places the world over. Roy also talks about India rediscovering its pride – people in India and China have rediscovered hope. It’s the American dream reborn across swaths of Asia and the Far East.

  The CBS clip mentioned that India will eventually outsource to China. In which areas? I’ve just gotten started on the Khanna book, and its premise seems to be that India and China will learn to complement one another – they will leverage each other’s strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. Working in tandem will make Chindia even more formidable.

  It’s amazing to see how quickly India’s outsourcing industry has developed. In the 2004 CBS clip, the trend was beginning to take off. Nowadays, it’s full blown – Indian outsourcing firms are stealing each other’s workers, and have to implement retention measures to keep talent. That includes keeping the parents happy. Which spotlights a huge cultural difference. In the US, imagine if management were to coddle parents and appeal to them. Just the thought of my mom speaking with my boss makes me uneasy.

  So while geography may have lost significance, distinct cultural differences remain, regardless of whether they can teach call center workers to talk like Brooklynites.

• 6. Josh Hickman  |  December 24th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

  I felt a little uneasy about the segment. Watching something like this makes me wonder if we will have any jobs left in the U.S. by the time our kids are entering the work force. If India is doing our taxes and business functions, China is doing our manufacturing, and labor costs are 30-50% less overseas, what will we have left in 30 years? The U.S. definitely has some work to do in terms of education reform and technological advances so we can stay competitive in this global economy as well as the suggestions that Zakaria laid out in The Post American World. I am generally an optimist, but I am a little concerned for America’s future and this clip just stuck the knife in deeper. After our studies at Cal Poly and acting as CEO, wouldn’t you all also cut costs by sending jobs overseas?

• 7. Chris Carr  |  December 24th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

  Good comments thus far.

  Let me jump in with something to think about as you watch this clip and reflect on it …

  One of our job expectations as scholars in academia are to research questions that many assume have already been answered and are a given. Yet, when captured and measured, the data actually show that our fears and/or assumptions are greatly misplaced.

  See, e.g., today’s Wall Street Journal article and book review on this book, Globalization: The Irrational Fear That Someone In China Will Take Your Job, by a Columbia University business school prof and one of his colleagues who is a historian.

  Their research and book argue, among other things, that the data (which we all know is different then we we each speculate and say, “Well, it seems to me …”) show that job losses due to higher productivity — often the result of improving technology — greatly outnumber those lost to globalization.

  Yet, let’s be honest — too many Americans are intellectually lazy and continue to believe the contrary. They often pin the blame on people and workers from countries with slanted eyes (Chinese) and/or dark skin (Indians). Said blame game makes it easy to shift responsibility from themselves and their own shortcomings to another, and plays right into “I am a victim” mentality. Each of you are one of the lucky few in this world — you are able to receive a graduate level education from an accredited, well-respected school and hence have the skills, ability, training and knowledge base to separate fact from fear mongering in this regard.

  Since the beginning of time the world has been about change. Many, not all, of the winners in said environment are those people, firms and countries that are able to welcome and adapt to said change. Those that do not and fight to maintain the status quo are likely relegated to the dust bins of history.

  If you wish to read the above book for your Spring quarter book review, I will add it to the approved list, and I look forward to your commentary and strength and weakness analysis of said book.

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