I suspect in the coming weeks we are going to hear a lot more talk about India and the continued outsourcing of U.S. jobs. On the one hand I think the types of position that will be outsourced to India will change – salaries in India are inflating annually at a rate 15% among IT professionals for example, making the lower costs of outsourcing less attractive than they say, two years ago – but the attraction of offshoring jobs will continue, and perhaps for the same old reasons.
My experience with outsourced jobs to India – entirely as a U.S. consumer/customer at this point - has been nothing but positive. I am particularly struck by how in Indian society – so exotic, mystical even – people are called Philip and Peter and Patrick. Just like in Wisconsin, in fact.
So, while some U.S. workers can feel less endangered as the wages gap continues to close, others can only hope that India’s apparent failure to learn from U.S. hiring practices will draw India under the spotlight once again, albeit for altogether different reasons, and give employers pause to think – not whether or not we should be exporting jobs – but how to export best practice recruiting too. We’ll see. I’m sure a background check would reveal many Indian customer service reps are going under assumed names. What next?
Namaste, Baba.
I love your teaser links, coy links or whatever they’re called. I used to use them too but now do so with reluctance because my guess is that people rarely take the time to follow them and therefore don’t get the joke. As smart asses say: think about it.
I figure that if someone has any interest in understanding what I might mean, or if they want to dig deeper into my influences/sources, they will go behind the links and at least see where I might be coming from. Better still, read what I have linked to. If someone wants to use my posts for the purpose for which they are really intended – to make you stop, consider, evaluate, agree, disagree and even respond – it requires your active participation, even to the extent of going through the clickety-click process I went through to add a different dimension to the work. It’s a blog, right? Behind the veil of any post lies an entire world of information and possibilities, no? Why not create a peephole or even a gateway into that world?
On the other hand, if someone just wants to quickly scan what I write to get the gist of it, where’s the harm in them possibly missing the underlying message that could be playfully buried? It’s only a post. Hopefully it’s fun too - if just for you and me, so be it.
Last, there is a lot I could have linked to but chose not to. I’m seeing an increasing number of posts, articles and what-have-you that talk about offshoring RPO and other recruiting services to India. Therein lies the real point for discussion but why make it that obvious? It will hit us all right between the eyes soon enough.
Amitai.
Nice reply. Worth a separate posting of its own.