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Life of a BPO associate / agent !!

Associate is the starting level of a BPM and in some organizations they are called as Executives. They are basically the backbone of any/all BPM companies and no company can survive without Associate level employees. While associates are extremely important for BPM companies, the companies also have some key expectations from them. The employees stay in a company only if they meet these organizations and they grow in a company if they exceed these expectations.

Minimum expectations from a BPM Associate:
  • He / she should be a graduate in any field even though some companies still accept HSC passed candidates
  • He / she should have good communication skills (Written and Spoken)
  • He / she should be willing to work in shifts
  • He / she should have long term plans to work in the company and BPM Industry as well
Interview Process of an Associate generally includes three interviews which includes:
  • An HR round where a candidate is assessed on basic fitment, reason for applying for the position, expectation on compensation
  • Training, Communication Round where the candidate has to undergo a communication assessment with a team of communication experts. Some companies also use online tools to assess communication skills
  • Operations round is conducted by the Operations Asst Manager or Manager level leaders and only those who clear HR and Training round generally make it to this round. Here they are assessed on their willingness to work in a BPM company which includes expectation setting on shift timing, training, compensation
  • In some cases where the business is related to special skills, there are client interviews added to the interview process as well
Onboarding process is nothing but the joining process after clearing all the interviews and accepting the offer letter. Once the employee clears all the interviews, the company makes an offer which has the compensation details, joining date and other employment conditions. After accepting the offer letter, employee is expected to report to work on the said joining date along with all the documents mentioned in the offer letter.

Onboarding process starts with validation of all the documents like educational certificates, address proof, personal information. This is followed by Bank Account opening process so that the salary can be directly credited to employees accounts. After completing these important steps there is a handover process from HR to the training team where the employees are informed about their training program and schedule.

Training process begins once the employees are successfully on-boarded, they now have to attend two types of trainings
a. Language and Culture training
b. Product and Process training

Both these trainings are extremely important for an employee to move to production or to stay in the company. These trainings are followed by assessments and it is mandatory for employees to clear these assessments. Companies are very strict about their assessment process and they give 3-4 chances to employees to clear the assessment but if the training is attending with attention, clearing these assessments is not difficult. Those who don't clear these assessments even after 3-4 attempts are asked to leave the  organization.

After the assessment companies have something called OJT which stands for On Job Training where employees work on actual product or systems under SME supervision. This is done to make them comfortable with the systems. This is the last stage of formal learning with the luxury of SME support.

Production is the final stage of employee life cycle. If you are in production, you should be proud of yourself as you have reached here after successful completion of your interview, onboarding process and training assessments. Here employees are assigned teams and a team manager and they are handed over from training to production. At this stage, the team managers set goals with the employees and the life becomes BAU, Business As Usual.


If hope this document is helpful. Feel free to ask questions and I will be happy to help.



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