Naukri Bazar : A Pioneer Human Resource Company.

BPO industry has been one of the fastest growing sector in India employing a large pool of talents in India. BPO companies train their employees extensively on communication and domain specific skills which can be deployed across sectors when you wish to.

Career Growth map:
The career map in a BPO is fairly simple. There can be two types of movements available, a vertical movement or a lateral movement.
A vertical movement is when you take one step up the hierarchy, like moving from an executive level to a senior executive level, team leader or a manager.
The lateral movement occurs when you intend to change your domain or to a different department all together. For example, moving from operations to training, quality or HR.

Vertical Movement:
Your success in the industry is not determined by the level you are at; it depends on the exposure you have had across domains. If you have performed exceedingly well at the front end, you could potentially be promoted to the level of a team leader within 2-3 years and then to a manager's role within 5 years. The industry offers a wide variety of jobs to young professionals in areas like IT, customer support, human resources, training and logistics.
BPOs actively encourages employees to move up the ladder or gain cross-functional skill sets. Most companies fill their front-end leadership roles from the talent pool available within the organization.
The industry acknowledges the aspirations of its young workforce and grooms them through its training programs. This aspect of employee development is unique and is being adopted by several other sectors.

Leadership roles:
Leaders are the group of visionaries who keep close track of all processes working under the flagship of a company, whether a captive centre or third party vendor. Their goal is to align their efforts and objectives to the company's clients, shareholders and employees. As the industry is maturing, we see leadership comprising tenured executives who have moved up their debut company's hierarchy. You could look at transitioning into a senior leadership role within 8-10 years of joining the industry.

Lateral Movement
If you intend to move in to a different department with in the same organization then it can be called as a Lateral Movement. It can be to any department :

Quality department:
Most companies have dedicated quality departments that keep an eye on the day-to-day processing of jobs. People working in quality departments are usually tenured executives from the frontline workforce as they have a deep insight of the product under surveillance. Typically, quality executives monitor interactions between the call centre agent and customer and provide feedback to the agent for improvement.

Training and development:
Training can be a part of Human Resources in some organisations or can be a separate division in some. If you enjoy mentoring your peers, possess excellent communication skills and have been in the industry for 3-4 years, a career as a communication or soft skills trainer could be the next step. A lot of companies outsource their training intervention to third party vendors, thus opening options for a new set of outsourcing industry -- training and consultancy. You could also join such organisations as a consultant or trainer.

Human Resources:
You could broadly look at two career paths within HR -- you could become a recruitment consultant where your key responsibility would be to hire candidates for your organisation. The other profile is in corporate HR, wherye ou will be responsible for employee engagement activities, pay roll, day-to-day employee issues etc. You must also have an MBA in HR for the same. Make sure you take advantage of the company-sponsored MBA programmes that most BPOs offer in case you are targeting HR jobs in future.

Admin/Facilities:
Most BPOs invest heavily in infrastructure and require manpower to manage the facility. This involves coordinating with external agencies in maintenance of infrastructure, procuring the necessary equipments, etc.

Logistics/Transportation:
Transportation is also a huge department in most BPOs and you could also transition into a career in logistics and transportation management.

Career options in other industries:
BPOs train their employees extensively on communication and domain specific skills. It could range from learning about several financial products to technical skills. This enables employees to build specialist skill sets that could be leveraged across sectors in the long run. Employees also learn sales and customer service skills during this phase that could come in handy for jobs in the service industry at a later stage. Skills acquired in a BPO job are also relevant to jobs in the telecom, IT, hospitality, travel and tourism, retail, banking and finance, and the media domain. From being seen as a fun place to work, BPOs are working hard to ensure stable career paths for their young employees.

Some of the BPO Services includes
Customer Support Services
Technical Support Services
Telemarketing Services
Employee IT Help-desk Services
Insurance Processing
Data Entry Services / Data Processing Services
Data Conversion Services
Scanning, OCR with Editing & Indexing Services
Book Keeping and Accounting Services
Form Processing Services
Internet / Online / Web Research
Provident Fund and Gratuity related services

So, if you are contemplating a BPO career, there is no better time than now to make the most of the opportunities the industry offers.