Why Choose the BPO Industry As Your First Career

Many people ask me, what are the best jobs and careers in the Philippines and my answer for the last 7 years hasn’t changed—the BPO industry.

If you don’t know, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or Call Center industry, has been at the center of the Philippine economy’s return to the global stage. In the last 10 years, over 1 million BPO jobshave been created and the exciting thing is that 40% of these jobs have been created outside Metro Manila. This means there is probably a BPO near you if you’re in Cebu, Davao, Baguio or Laguna. The Philippines recently overtook India and is now #1 in the world in call centers and people from all over the world appreciate the work we provide for them.

But you’re probably thinking to yourself, “I don’t want to work in a call center!”

I get violent reactions like that often. Then comes a violent attack on call centers as a dead-end career, where you spend years of your life working at night, without any real upward mobility. Once a call center agent, always a call center agent.

I’m here to tell you that thinking is wrong and the BPO industry could really be your pathway to success in life and in the Philippines. Did you know that the current CEO of Globe, Ernest Cu, started one of the first call centers in the Philippines? Did you know that I started my career as a call center agent when I worked for Fisher Investments in 2003? I worked 3x a week while in school and made over 700 calls per day in a telemarketing role. It was hard. I often got yelled at by the people I was calling (or bothering) and saying the same script over and over again got boring. By the end of my shift, I was exhausted and my mouth dry.

But you know what? It made me.

It taught me how to communicate with strangers. It taught me how to sell. It taught me how to overcome objections. It taught me how to work hard for what I wanted. Working as an outbound call center agent gave me the confidence that I can fail 99 times in a row, but on my 100th call, if I kept working hard and didn’t give up, I would get my next success. In my first 6 months at Fisher Investments, I made tens of thousands of calls and was rejected tens of thousands of times.

I was a huge failure. But I also generated hundreds of leads (successful calls), a less than 1% success rate, but that was high enough to be the #1 call center agent at Fisher. I started my career in a call center then I started my own call center in 2007 and worked hundreds of nights, just like many of our countrymen.

I wasn’t ashamed of it—I was proud of it and even more proud of all the great jobs I created here for Filipinos. But my career didn’t end in the call center. Instead, I used the skills I developed working as a call center agent and running my own call center to become an even better CEO for you and Kalibrr.

The BPO call center industry is just a road you have to pass for a bigger destination. This road will teach you many of the communication, technical and life skills you need to be successful. Its the same skills that I credit with my own success. Right now, there are thousands of available BPO jobs for companies like Teleperformance, Accenture, SPi, and Cognizant.

Kalibrr wants to help match you with these jobs and stay with you to make sure you utilize your skills to build a productive, meaningful career that will allow you to support your families and make your dreams come true. I’m excited to be a part of your journey.