Tesda to offer free training for 1,000 BPO near-hires

About 1,000 nearly hired applicants or near-hires in Cebu will get free training to prepare them for jobs in call centers and other outsourcing companies.

The program is an offshoot of a P5 million grant to the Cebu Education Development Foundation for Information Technology (CEDF-IT), said its executive director Jun Sa-a on Tuesday.

The program is expected to start before the end of the year.

CEDF-IT partnered with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) for the program.

Jun Sa-a announced this during the opening of the foundation’s exhibit at the Ayala Center Cebu on Tuesday.

The P5 million grant is part of P500 million allocated by the Department of Budget Management for TESDA, which uses it for their Training Scholarship for Work Program.

About 50,000 people are employed in the business process outsouring (BPO) companies, a rapidly growing industry in Cebu but the lack of qualified workers has led to a hiring rate of only 5 percent to 10 percent.

The term “near-hires” refers to applicants who lack some competencies for the job and require more training to fully meet expectations.

“We actually proposed for P23 million budget assistance but they can only give us P5 million which is better than nothing,” he said.

Sa-a said based on the feedback from IT member companies of the foundation, at least 3,700 workers are needed for the fourth quarter of 2011.

Sa-a said that companies would refer to them their near-hires for training based on a program tailored to the employer’s needs. The foundation would then issue a voucher to TESDA for training.

“The P5 million will be good for 1,000 near-hires but we’re hoping to have more next year,” Sa-a said.

Sa-a said CEDFIT would prioritize their member companies such as Aegis People Support, NCR and Qualfon.

“Most of the people needed now are for call center companies so we expect to do more training on speaking and a little bit of technical skill because call center entry levels now are more into customer service with technical support,” he said.

At present CEDF-IT has 105 member companies including BPOs, telecommunication firms, real estate developers, universities, training companies and local government units.

The training program for near-hires is the best way to create the right talent pool needed for their different operations, said Saa.

“The industry hiring rate now is still only 10 percent but when we did some training before we were able to raise that to 30 percent to as high as 70 percent,” he said.

Sa-a said even companies with in-house training programs were asking the foundation’s help.

“We will continue to provide the link between the academe and the industry because we think this is the best way to make sure we produce what the industry needs in order to grow,” Sa-a said.