The Future of Work: How BPO companies are adapting to the new On-site Work dynamic

The onset of the COVID pandemic mandated a shift from the traditional work model to a remote or hybrid workforce, and the whole world adjusted to this new reality. However, as countries began to emerge from the effects of COVID, there were calls for BPOs to return to the on-site work model.

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How are BPO companies transitioning to on-site work without experiencing decreased leads during sourcing or employee attrition?

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This latest Recruitment Hackers webinar series explores this recent development with our special guest speaker, Marvin Vinluan, Director, Strategic Sourcing and Recruitment Marketing, Alorica Philippines. He was joined by Mila Navarro, Senior Social Media Strategist, Talkpush and Blanche Buhia, Business Development Manager, Talkpush.

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Press play to start watching this insightful webinar, or read the transcript below so you can discover valuable tips to incorporate into your recruitment strategy.

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Don’t feel like watching?

No worries, the full transcript is available below 👇

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Blanche: Welcome again to the latest installment of the recruitment hackers Webinar Series. For this session, we will be talking about the future of work is shaping after years of having to work from home. And with COVID restrictions easing, a lot of BPO companies are now slowly working on site and transitioning to a more hybrid sort of setup. Today, one of our guest speakers would be telling us how challenging or otherwise it has been to remodel their current processes from a virtual one to a fully on-site or hybrid sort of dynamic. We've invited Mr Marvin from Alorica, Philippines.

Hi, Marvin, how are you today?

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Marvin: I'm good. Thank you for asking. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me once again to be part of your Recruitment Hackers live webinar.

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Blanche: It's our honor Marvin, and I'm sure our audience is very excited to have you here too. If you know him and you've worked with him in the past or work with Marvin, show him some love in the chat. And so quick background about Marvin, he is the current director of strategic sourcing and recruitment marketing at Alorica Philippines. And he is here to talk about how they're adapting to the new on-site work dynamic. And of course, as you all know, Alorica is one of the biggest BPO companies in the Philippines, not only in the Philippines but actually in the world. So we're definitely in for an insightful discussion this evening. And also joining him as the moderator of this panel is Mila Navarro. She's our social media strategist who has been working with some of our biggest BPO clients. So hi, Mila. And I'll let you take over.

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Mila: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for attending this very interesting chat. I am certainly very curious about this topic. Before the pandemic, things were a specific way. However, during the pandemic, we had to quickly switch to a completely new way of working. And then again, we're now having to switch once more—so many changes for the BPO industry. So I'm just really curious to ask Marvin a few questions. And before we start specifically on, you know, post-pandemic transitions, I'd like to know a little bit of history because I'm very, I'm very interested.

We were just talking about it. Can you tell us a little bit about how hiring used to work, let's say, seven to 10 years ago? How would you use to source and recruit talent?

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Marvin: Yeah, so it's a good way to start the conversation. Looking back is typically a good point of reference, maybe five or ten years ago because I've been in the industry for quite some time. About 17 years ago, I started joining the BPO as a recruitment phone screener. Way back, we typically had a huge number of applicants being processed through job fairs. So these are, you know, these are face to face interactions, physical job fairs that happen here and there. We travelled a lot across the Philippines to look for the top talents in the different provinces in the Philippines. So I was part of that, and I was actually also a relocation coordinator. So you can see there's just so much dynamics when you're trying to attract the top talent across the country.

So job fairs were really our main source, second to that would be employee referrals. So, employee referrals also, managing the network of our employees in you try to maximize that resource. They source through interactions like if they go to their annual school alumni interactions and get to meet their friends and refer the company they work for. Online at that time was sort of, say, non-existent. Especially the recruitment Chatbot was non-existent, even all of the social media probably at that time. Sorry, I might, you know, reveal my age. Friendster was our social media back then, and I don't think Friendster exists anymore. But we don't use them as our sourcing channels anymore. So a lot has to change. So when we approach 2016 -17-18, that's when AI started appearing. You know, machine learning.

We've been hearing about data; we've been hearing about the advent of automation. And that's when we realized that social media is becoming a thing. And now, and I know for sure, some of the people in this webinar can relate to me. At that time, Twitter was leading and then came Facebook. When Facebook came, it was like a spike, and as we entered the first year of the pandemic, we saw a huge uptick in applications from online, and now online is becoming our main resource or sourcing channel when we look for applicants. I think we were fortunate enough because of the large employee base of Alorica. Employee referral increased its relevance. So when we talk about employee referral, we used to get around 40% of our hires from referrals. During the pandemic, it went as high as 70%. And people can market the company online, and that's where they get the referrals because we couldn't go outside. And then the job fair that I talked about earlier was zero. It went from 60% to 0% during the pandemic, and that's, that's a huge switch. We couldn't let go of job fairs back then because it was really our main sourcing channel. But then, when the pandemic happened, who knew we would actually survive using online and employer referrals, so that's where we are now.

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Mila: That's interesting. That's a big change. I've read some figures that said that if the pandemic hadn't happened, it might have been another 20 years before we transitioned into a digital augmented chatbot AI and an even automation augmented process. So it's interesting what happened. So you realized that there's a huge talent pool in the digital world waiting for you to advertise your jobs to find these opportunities and give them a good candidate experience so that they can apply. You've been using Talkpush for a while, you've been automating your process and delighting your candidates with an excellent process. And that pretty much allowed you to surf the pandemic waves successfully.

But now, you know, we're coming into almost half of 2022. People are already becoming a little more comfortable with the situation, and a lot of companies are now transitioning back to an onsite work model. And I know that this comes with a lot of challenges, probably because things worked during the pandemic, right. So I'd like to know how Alorica is doing this transition. First one in the front of sourcing, you know, you are already seeing a lot of success with digital sourcing. You realize that you don't necessarily need to have an expensive job fair, or you know, set up shop in a supermarket to gather candidates. You already have social media, and you already have referrals. So that transition for sourcing and also, of course, your employees, how are you transitioning them from a remote to an onsite or is it hybrid? Please shed some light on this. It's very interesting.

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Marvin: Okay, okay. So let's start first off with sourcing and attracting talent. Definitely, we've adjusted most of our process or recruitment process online. The thing is, when we started transitioning to on site, we also have to take it to consideration or keep in mind that we are still independent. We're not in any way out of the woods yet, right? So anything can happen like the new variants are coming in. We still have to maintain that mindful of our actions when we all converge into one site, when we do process candidates today on site because they also need to understand that in the Philippines, there are still applicants who still don't have internet connectivity or the computer or the PC at home, where they can continue that recruitment process. So we have to adapt to making that candidate experience a hybrid experience. So number one is anything that we can do or process online, like virtually, we have to do like for example, the screening process has to be done over the phone or virtually the one on one interviews with the hiring managers should be done online. Because the fact remains that we have to limit still the number of people coming in. And then we provide access to our candidates on-site when they need to take the assessments, especially the client-specific assessments that need a more quiet space because we know at home, you know, it's going to be noisy. If you're going to take that language assessment, there's just ambient noise that you cannot control. Animals you know or pets that you might have at home may disrupt your performance when you record your voice.

So we need to make sure that our facilities can accept candidates on-site to take their assessments and provide that quiet space. And then, once they're there, at least the experience will be quick. It's in and out. They don't have to wait long hours. Unlike before, candidates I knew. Sometimes, they spent 8-10 hours staying in the recruitment hub to complete the entire process. So imagine the day is no different. We can process candidates half of the time at home and half on site. So that's on the sourcing front. One of the challenges as well. When we started going back on-site, more candidates were now looking for work at home opportunities. And we all know that the BPO industry is complex. It's not as simple as telemarketing or others. Some clients cannot allow us to do work at home because of data security. We all know that, right? But some clients are very accepting of that aspect, for example, content moderation, back end work, and some other simple, maybe retail industry. So it will remain to be a hybrid setup. Because we don't want to lose the ability to also attract talent from different parts of the Philippines where you know it doesn't necessarily now require the company to set up shop in a far-flung place. We can hire them and have them work remotely on the business side.

There were a lot of changes when we started transitioning employees on site. We still have to ensure the safety of our workers. And that means we need to remain vigilant, and you know, we're able to remind our employees to maintain safety protocols at all times. So first is, of course, there's a requirement for us to present our vaccination records. There's also a requirement for us to respond to the daily health survey. So these are things that we need to put in place. And that's one of the things that we need to remind our employees to follow protocol continuously. And in over the last two years, during the pandemic, we've grown and transitioned to on-site; maybe it's a good thing and a bad thing. A good thing because we were able to grow despite the pandemic, and the bad thing is when I asked some of my new team members to work on-site, I had to make sure that they had available workspaces. So the space is finite, and they didn’t need to have workspaces when we hired them. So that's one thing we need to make sure that they have, we have to coordinate with our security team facilities and of course our IT. So that's that because we've grown, and we've never really had the need to work in the office when we hired them. It was a big change.

So it's sort of like an extended onboarding experience for them. And then the other thing is, we have a robust or very established process when we retrieve the devices. So when we deployed the Alorica PC or laptops to our employees during the first year of the pandemic, now's the time to slowly retrieve them. So we then require our employees to bring their PCs with them while commuting. So we have our facilities team and security teamwork on a process where we can safely retrieve the devices so that our employees can go back to work safely. So those are the challenges and some of the fun stuff that happened when we started going back onsite.

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Mila: That's very interesting. We have a really good question in the Q&A, and we're going to answer it in around 10 minutes. That's actually our next topic. It's very interesting. I want to see what you think, Marvin, because I know there are a little bit of more controversial topics, specifically in the Philippines. So I'm going to launch that q&a specific question. Thank you to the person that brought it up. Anyway, I've heard a lot of places talk about how this going back to the office is a challenge because they have grown so much during the pandemic that there really isn't any place anymore for all the people that are now collaborating. And even the fact that you know, a lot of people don't know each other. A lot of team members have never actually seen each other face to face, and that's a universal experience for BPO companies. And it makes sense because now that you have grown and after the pandemic forced you into the digital, automated social media sourced talent model because efficiency does drive growth. So I think that's both a positive and a challenge, as you said, but it's interesting to hear it because you're not the first leader I've heard say that. So we have the challenges that you have encountered.

And now, let's go into that question. So the question is whether there was any attrition among the sourcing recruitment team when Alorica started resuming on site operations, and how was it managed, if any, I think this person is probably referring to a post COVID trend to put it to put a word to it, which has been largely called the Great resignation. The grand resignation for those who weren't familiar with this before. It's basically a movement where a lot of millennial and Gen Z workers have been quitting their jobs because of a few reasons. The Delaware global 2022 survey has surveyed many young workers who have resigned from their jobs and cite stress burnout for the reason for quitting. 40% of Gen Z’s and 24% of millennials report that they would leave their job within two years. They had you know if they chance to do it. Many of the reasons were pay, mental health, and a lot of them reporting things like burnout. Another interesting thing is that in the LinkedIn 2022 Global Trends report, three fourths of employees who were surveyed prefer a hybrid or remote working situation. 63% of respondents saying that work life balance as their top criterion when it comes to choosing a company even above pay and benefits. So you know, good work-life balance, learning and development opportunities are some of the biggest asks Gen Z’s and millennials are asking their employers post pandemic. They already got a taste of what it's like to build your life around your work schedule, which is going to be a little more flexible or even just being able to stay at home and not face traffic or even just expose yourself to other people in the pandemic.

So I think this is a really good question in terms of was the attrition in the Philippines; there have been different perspectives. A recent study by sprout solutions reported that in 2021, voluntary attrition or resignation from their jobs across all industries increased by 100% in the Philippines, which is in theory a local reflection of the global movement called the Great resignation. However, some other government agencies, for example, have disputed this claim and have said that, it's actually nowhere near that much. So, I'd love to know, has it been that with Alorica? Has this transition, you know, led to more attrition or are people sort of demanding a hybrid? How are you dealing with employees demanding hybrid models? If your clients are maybe saying, no, if you can go on-site, we need to go on site. How do you strike that balance between employee and client demands?

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Marvin: Right. So I actually like this question. And then the question, I think, is really more on sourcing and recruitment. Okay, so I don't think anyone is spared from the pandemic in this situation. I would say the people moving out of Alorica within the sourcing recruitment team has several reasons. And some of them actually are still close. I mean, we still maintain connection, so we still have that. But the reason I think is the numbers are just there. You can feel it, even if it's just the 1% difference. We felt when people said, Sir, I am tired, and I want to rest for a while, or sir, I would like to take a break. I want to focus on my family, so those are situations that are, I think, common, and we're not spared. But the thing is, based on my experience, they left not only because they wanted to rest in the Philippines, we cannot afford to, you know, not have a job right. So, he would move out to another opportunity, which also has the same situation. There'll be a lot of work. It's not going to be different. You will sometimes be working during the shift. So there's a lot of trade-off from what I see. It is simply because the pandemic has caused or become a catalyst for people to explore.

And then that's the burnout because some people or some of us forget the distinction between work and life because we are at home. We forgot you know my travel time is typically about 45 minutes to an hour when I go to work and that one hour for me is something that I don't think of anything, I just you know, travel, but that one hour when I'm working at home becomes work. So you kind of feel like your typical nine-hour day job becomes a 10 or 12 hour day job. And it's all a matter of perspective. So if you're unable to control your time, and that's because you were just when you were taking your coffee, turn on your laptop, you started working, it's a trap. People typically open their emails and start working, and it's not even their time to work. So sometimes it's about this. So our responsibility as leaders, and I would suggest to all the leaders in this webinar, is to ensure that we remind the members to put some barriers and know when is the right time to work and when's the right time to rest.

So as leaders, also we have to discipline ourselves not to bother our team members in the wee hours of the day because that will trigger them. To open and turn on your PC, in fact, because that's a cause of people feeling burned out. And yeah, we had that. And during the first few months of the pandemic, we didn't know what's going to happen. We didn't know what to do or how long the lockdowns were going to happen. So we've had our fair share of attrition even during the pandemic and even after, you know, people decided to do on-site, so here's the thing I did not experience, someone said, or maybe I have one because she moved into the province. They were working in, and she said, Okay, I just wanted to stay in the province with my family and then she decided to resign just simply because they're already in the province. So that's the only one I had, and I did not see a big wave and hopefully not downward. I didn't see a big wave of people resigning because we will work on-site.

Actually, when the government mandated us to start going on-site again, we had to prep our team two months before this even happened. So I know earlier this year, we had the Omicron scare right in the Philippines, and then after that, people recovered and then the government said no, we have to go back on site. So we had to prep our team members. You know there was Team A, and Team B. Team A works Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays on site and vice versa. You don't just say okay, 100% cold turkey, everyone goes on site. It's a process. It's change management. You have some team members requesting to be working from home, that's fine, but it's a trade-off. So there will be weeks they'll be on site. The thing is, you have to give them or make them realize that working on site is also a good thing. You get to see team members like what you mentioned earlier, you get to see team members, and as a leader, you make it a little bit more exciting. You huddle; food sharing is still not allowed. So it's still going to be packed lunches. So meetings are going to be a little bit more exciting because you get to see them, and you inform them that hey, going on-site isn't bad at all because you'll still have your moments of peace when you travel to work. And then when you step out of the office, and that's the time, you can really set your mind that the work is done, I won't have to turn on my laptop when I get home. And the time is for me. So those are the things you may have to do explain to your team members so that they can sort of like, adjust; I myself experienced this when I went back to on-site. I'd say it was a different feeling. You know, it was a different feeling when you know, see people, but it was scary a little bit because you have to have your alcohol (sanitizer) on hand and all those things, but eventually becomes a norm again, so you just really have to manage that change.

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Mila: That's, that's great. I love your change management perspective. So it sounds like what you're saying is, that there's still a hybrid model, one of the secrets or important things that people should take into consideration when transitioning is, remember, it's a transition, right? Make it gradual. Ensure that you start with hybrid and as the need, or even, you know, the possibility arises, and maybe some people will move to on-site. And that framing and communication are very important; you have to make sure that you frame it in a positive light. And I like what you said because I've been reading a lot about what tactics some companies are starting to use. Some industries or some people are actually experiencing really bad attrition when moving to on-site. Or even just in general, because maybe millennials and Gen Z’s are reevaluating their choices of work of life. And it sounds like many companies are focusing on supporting more, for example, social or climate causes, including more mental health support.

When it comes to even when coming on site, we need to see people, we need to experience the real world and digital-only can also be detrimental for your mental health your physical health. Are you standing up? Do you have the right setup at home? You know, are you going outside? There are a lot of things that companies are doing like volunteering, for example, or including more communication when it comes to what that company is doing in terms of climate change, social causes, all of those things. So I'd love to know, Are you managing some of this change by, you know, attacking sources or causes of poor mental health that so many GenZ’s and millennials are worried about?

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Marvin: Yeah, if I may just share, one of the things that we launched during the pandemic, actually, even before the pandemic, it was already existing, but we knew it's becoming sort of a cause for concern. When people are working at home, it’s becoming a problem, like, for example, during breaks if family issues or discussions are interfering with their focus, right? So we have what we call a heart to heart. And it's a hotline for people who want to reach out to professionals to they can talk to speak to. A professional like a psychiatrist can really help them manage their mental health well being. And it's not common for Filipinos to have that, to be honest. It is not something that we're used to doing, and it's something that we only see in movies. So, to have this online and virtually is a good thing for us. And then, during the first part of when we launched it, there's an uptick of usage we know even when which sites have the highest visits. Of course, it's based on a schedule. And it's based on their availability. But yeah, we have got that kind still use today, even after the elections, people are anxious, some of them are kind of distraught of the results. So it didn't. It did not match your expectations. So they kind of lost focus. We have something they can reach out to, but I cannot manage that because I, myself, may also have those experiences. So we have professionals on standby to help them out.

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Mila: We love that. That's very nice. I can relate to almost all of the things that you said, including feeling disappointed with election results. But I mean, there's a lot going on in the world, right? I don't think it's a new thing or a rare thing for us to feel anxious. And I do feel like when you're stuck at home, and your work life, the news, the computer, the family issues, everything is sort of colliding together, I do feel like separation sometimes can be really good. And, you know, I personally prefer a hybrid model where, if I have to stay at home because of the situation, I can work at home, but I, I do appreciate on-site as well. And I'm sure there are many other people who can relate to that. Just the fact that your brain understands that a certain space is for work and a certain space is for rest. And mixing that up can be detrimental to your discipline to your habits. I'm one that for example, when I'm at home, and when I'm working from home, I cannot stop snacking. And I know it sounds like a superfluous thing. But it's just one example that my brain doesn't really understand the separation between pleasure and work. And sometimes everything just becomes work. Because, you know, it's just a thing that happens to a lot of people.

So I'm just curious. And this is something that Max also brought up. There are a lot of people who love working in the office, and we're probably very tired of working from home, or maybe you know, they have small children. And it's very difficult to focus when the kids are at home because they're not going to school. Do you have marketing campaigns to recruit or source for the people that specifically really want to go on-site, we're tired of remote, we're tired of digital, want to go outside and see people and, you know, be in an office and have a little bit of normalcy? Or like normal life back after months of just staying at home? And have you identified those people? Do you have recruitment campaigns specifically directed for them when it comes to the people that are on-site? And are there any segments of the population who are friendlier to onsite work? How can we target them via advertising? Do you have any insights on that?

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Marvin: So based on experience, the one thing that we did right away changed most of our ads because work at home is now becoming more of an incentive for agents that are performing. Because they don't need a lot of supervision, they can essentially be independent, since they are an expert in their field. So after they train on site, they are deployed and given the chance to work at home. So all of our hiring today is really trained on-site and then and then in select programs, they would do work at home, so we have to change our campaigns and our job ads. And initially, I was scared that it might lower my leads or decrease my applications, but it didn't. So this goes to show that people understand the demands of the industry. We still have a lot of people that are, you know they accept on site work as real work because we're still a big chunk of our labor markets. There isn't a traditional way of working; you may want to do the work on-site. However, because of the dynamic, most of the experienced ones, the call center experience agents understand that if they have proven that they can actually work at home. And those are the ones that are a bit difficult to convince because they already have established their setup at home. They know they can do it. So and the thing is, there's also a big like a huge uptick in job openings that provide work from home setup. And I would like to name a few, but I wouldn't. I'm sure the people who are in this call can relate. It's hard to compete with them. Because off the bat, they start work from home. And, you know, in our case, it's not, it's not the case, right, it's becoming more of an incentive for us, which is good for the experienced candidates, but before they even go to work from home, they have to spend, like two months on training. So I guess there's still a big a huge chunk of people who want to work on-site.

But if you want to be technical about it, I would suggest they would do like a zip code analysis. And then compare that to the network providers in those areas. So a zip code analysis typically looks at your employees who can work from home, find out where in Metro Manila or provinces where they are located, match it with your telecom telco provider, say, for example, globe is strong in this part, converges strongly in this market, smart strong in this part, but this area is somewhat spotty. And that's the time, you know, you can actually look for candidates in that area. And that's just being practical about it, right. So you want to target your social ads or Facebook ads in that particular area. So you can do geo-targeting and whatnot. But you know, because of the improvements of the infrastructure in our telco providers, there's really just a huge coverage now that has a better internet connection. So, you know, even as far as in local spots, they're starting to install fiber connections. And some provinces, can be proud that they have strong internet speed comparable to Metro Manila, sometimes even faster. So things are changing. And the challenge is for us to be able to attract and deliver the message properly and set expectations correctly. Let's not use job ads, like work from home and then and then when they apply, you actually need them to train on-site. So it's just going to create a bad candidate experience. So what we did was change everything, change our ads, and all of them are more of on-site.

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Mila: And has that been detrimental to your results?

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Marvin: No, no, no, actually, it didn't. The thing is, it is now an option, right? I am working with Julian, to fix our recruitment chat bot. We also have a web bot that's installed in our career page. That's more of a qualifier. Like if a candidate is looking for work from home, they channel to this campaign, if a candidate is amenable to work on site, then then they go to this campaign. So when we process them, the expectations are already separate for different candidates.

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Mila: And that goes to show like for companies that have already adopted the digital, not just the companies, but the candidates themselves, they now have different expectations, and so do employees. And that just goes to show that if you're going to recruit on social media, you need automation, you need chat bots. Yes, there is no way that you can do that manually, without a smart system that can help you segment those people. And like every time you talk to leaders like you, it just sort of cements more in my mind. And it's surprising to me that some companies still manage to do it manually, because it's just so much work. It's so many people, right. I wonder and I'm curious, like, looking ahead and seeing like how this becoming like the normal thing, you know, expecting to be allowed to work from home or to have a hybrid work mode. If you're a performer of a certain caliber, or even, you know, expecting it right off the bat.

Where do you see the industry going? Where do you think, we're going now that the pandemic is, of course not over but, there's a new normal now, and we have to adapt to the new life. Where do you see the BPO Industry going in terms of sourcing, tech, candidate expectations and experience? And of course, the hybrid workforce? Where do you see this going?

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Marvin: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. So I would answer it this way. Before, when we were hiring for call center agents, we were just looking for customer service and tech support. And when you talk about tech support, it's about internet service providers and all that. And that's how simple it is. The BPO industry has become more complex and we have started seeing programs or clients requiring sales experience upskilling. Then we started getting clients from the finance field. And then, and then now we have healthcare, and then now we have voice and then non-voice, and then we have so much more. Our clients are looking for universal agents. And it has to become more complex than ever. And now we have unicorn industries or companies in the retail, and then food deliveries have increased their requirements. So their requirements have become more and more complex.

I think the BPO will not stop in terms of changing the services that they provide. The BPO is so flexible and adaptive in the sense that if there is a new industry, the BPO will adapt. So, for example, content moderation is a new client. We all know that content moderation is increasing because of user-generated content. Right? So we have people who need to monitor that. And we have automation where cars are now driving by themselves. So we have to have agents who can teach the AI behind it. So teach whether this is a road sign, a person, or a cat crossing the road. So there are just so many things that the BPO industry is servicing today. And in a recruitment sense. Who are we supposed to hire? Or what's the guidance? Right?

What's the agent profile looking like? And we cannot process that without the help of automation. For example, as simple as asking an applicant several questions it's like ordering food, right? If you're very sensitive, you don't want some foods, and you have to give the waiter instructions because there are some foods that will cause some allergies. So when a person asks the waiter, or when the waiter takes the order, the waiter has to ask several questions. It's very similar to how we ask applicants, Hey, are you amenable to working graveyard shift? Do you have experience in project management? Do you have experience in the finance space? Are you amenable to working in the retention space? So there are just so many things now, so you can't just ask that and expect all your recruiters to process all of them with the right information?

So I think when we evolve, the more we augment ourselves with the help of automation, and the BPO industry will continuously be present in all aspects. The business is changing. There's just so many technologies behind it. And I guess I could say we are in the right business because this is sort of like your job security; it won't die. Even if there's a pandemic, we actually have to hire even more. And I can see there's a question here; yes, we have been hiring nonstop, even during the pandemic. And that's true. We are an open garage, where you can park any type of car inside like you're. And you know, that garage can take in that support. So I guess that's the evolution. And I've seen it. When I first joined the industry, I saw it, and it has evolved. It's not a simple industry anymore; It's more demanding more than ever.

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Mila: This was so interesting. Thank you, Marvin, so much for all of these insights. I am so curious, I could continue asking so many questions. But I think you've made it very clear that the BPO industry is very disrupted by not just global events, like the pandemic, but also by technology and social media so many different things. It's a complex industry. So I'm really happy that you joined recruitment hackers, where we try to gather the latest trends and share some insight with our fellow HR and recruitment professionals. So thank you so so much, Marvin, for your time. And over to Blanche, who's going to continue with the session. Thank you.

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Blanche: Thank you. Thank you, Mila, and Marvin, for that very insightful discussion. Yes, the times are evolving, and the need for companies to evolve with the times is crucial. And that is why we have really devoted a lot of our efforts to evolving and coming up with new technology that could go with the demands and really capture everything and engage with all of your candidates at the same time. So with that, I want to invite one of our customer success managers at Talkpush, who has been working with some of our biggest BPO clients, to show you how we've been partnering with Alorica and how we use our messaging chatbots to help them hire faster and more efficiently than ever before.

So Karla, are you there?

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Karla: Hi everyone. As mentioned, my name is Karla. And I am one of the customer success managers here at Talkpush. And first of all, I would like to thank you for joining our webinar today since you relate to what Mila and Marvin discussed about returning to the office as a lot of companies are now requesting their employees return to the office for work. But regardless if you're working from home or working or onsite, Talkpush is a tool that you can use to maximize the processing of the leads you have. I will be sharing a little bit about what Talkpush is and how we help our clients by automating the recruitment process. So let me share my screen:

Talkpush is it is a recruitment automation platform that serves a majority of our clients who are in the BPO industry. And you might be familiar with some of the logos that I'm currently showing you. But and they are coming from different industries actually. But they have three things in common and one is that they are getting a lot of leads on a daily basis. Second, their applicants are having a good time applying or it's easier and faster. In terms of application, and the last as I mentioned earlier, we are focusing on high volume rates Okay, so these are companies that are hiring in bulk or in volume. So they can actually hire a minimum of 80 to 100 candidates a month, and it can go up to five hundred

These clients use different sourcing channels to complete all of their hiring requisitions. And they are using different social media channels, not just social media, but different other channels to get those leads. But we have discovered, as also mentioned by Mila earlier, we are getting a large talent pool from social media. What I'm showing you guys right now, we'll be the CRM, Talkpush tool, and you're on the lead page is where you will be spending most of your time if you're a recruiter who is using Talkpush. We have the list of campaigns and the different folders as well. So these folders, we can create customized folders that can mirror your recruitment process. So this is where you're going to find all of your candidates, the conversation that you had with them. And basically everything or all of the information that we were able to gather during the application process. So we have their candidate's ID, their mobile number, email address their application details, we are also gathering data points or attributes that are important for the application.

And you should be able to find here as well, the questions and responses to questions which are prescreening questions that we have set up inside your campaign. So everything about the candidate, you can find it on Talkpush. I have mentioned prescreening questions. To set up those questions inside your database, you basically have to go to the campaign settings. And this is where you can customize or optimize the different questions that you would like to ask the candidates. These questions can help you filter out those qualified from the non-qualified leads. So we have different question types that you can use. So you can ask them to share with you an audio response, a video response, you can even ask them to upload the file or they can choose from the different options if you're going to.

So we have a feature called auto flow, which automates specific processes inside. So whether it's moving candidates from one folder to another, sending them a message or putting a label on their profiles in Talkpush, that's something that you can do inside auto flow. And I'm just going to show you quickly how you can set up one. So, for example, you would like to transfer a candidate automatically from one folder to another. If you've already completed the basic folder, where are they coming from, and then you're going to set up the trigger. So if their BPO experience is, let's say, zero to six months there, we want all of those candidates to be transferred or move to this folder. So you can even toggle on the Send message if you would like them to receive the templates that we have set. And there you go.

So if you have already set this up, or if this is turned on, all of the candidates who will answer zero to six months are inexperienced; they will automatically be moved to this folder.

I think I'm just going to show you a little bit about our analytics. So, we have our own analytics dashboard that will help you keep track of the leads that you're getting, the productivity of your teams and much more. So we have different tabs, we have different graphs, and filters that you can maximize earnings to get the data or to get the numbers you want. We are also going to show you the different metrics based on sourcing channels that you have connected inside of Talkpush. And if you want to know more about the productivity of your recruiters like how many leads were they able to process, how many how many movements did they do or activities they did inside of Talkpush that is something we can find. So those are the different analytics tabs that you can use or maximize on Talkpush. And if you would like to know more, you can book a demo with us. So for you to be able to book a demo, let me just show you here. You can just scan the QR code that we have here if you would like to book a demo with us if you would like to know more of the different features that we have inside Talkpush. Thank you so much.

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Blanche: Thank you, Karla for that wonderful demo. I'll share my screen again. If you would like to see more because what you saw was pretty much just the tip of the iceberg, we have several features for your recruitment processes. Talkpush isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, and it's designed to complement your recruitment processes. So we'd like to give you a customized demo based on your current needs. So scan the QR code or shoot me a message shoot me an email. And with that, we are at the very top of the hour. Thank you again for joining us in this wonderful community. The future of the workplace is constantly evolving. So thank you for joining us, Talkpush is here to help companies adapt as fast and efficiently as possible. So again, I'm Blanche. This is the Recruitment hackers and thank you so much for joining us. See you at our next event.

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Bye, everyone. And thank you for joining us. Bye

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