So You Wanna Work in a Call Center

The graduation rites has been long and boring, but after the ceremony the feeling of accomplishment has grabbed you and you feel giddy about it. a few days after the ceremony you bravely go out to find a job. the question is: “Will you find one?” Anxiety hits you after a few rejections. You don’t want to waste your education and most of all sooner or later your parents will start pressuring you to get a job to help them one way or the other. So what do you do? Since you can’t get a job in your chosen field, you gamely sought to be employed to the one of the most sought after industry in the Philippines – Call centers.

So how do you apply? But before of thinking of applying there many things to consider. One of them is the shift that you will be assigned to. Some call centers like West Contact Services, before you start training they will ask you the shift and rest days that you want. Some doesn’t give you that luxury. Are you ready for the following?:

Work during the nights
Chances of being assigned to the night shift are very high. So if you decide to take it prepare to forget about those late night gimmicks with your friends. If you are used to watch television till the odd hours of the night, then prepare to watch morning shows, to be honest I never had a chance to watch TV whenever I’m in the night shift. I rather sleep. Sleep during the day time. It’s hard during the first few weeks, but when you get used to it you’ll be OK.

Miss your family
I worked in the industry way back before I got married, and there was a time that I never get to see my parents, or siblings normally. I’ll see them in the morning when I got home, sleep. When you wake up you prepare to go to work again. So you will normally see them during your rest days.

Pressure
If you got in a call center that specializes on tele-marketing, then get ready to do your best to reached those daily quotas. So pressure is a way of life here. There are some accounts that requires 10 sales in an 8 hour shift. When you fail to get 1 sale in your first two hours, then it’s crunch time. My tip is to get as many sales in your first hour, to relieved the pressure as your shift passes.

Social adjustment
Working in a call center will expose you to different kinds of people. You’ll meet a variety that you’ll need to adjust on your ways to deal with different types of people. There’s the silent one, rumor mongers etc. But there are really friendly ones as well.

Now that you know what will happen when you work in a call center, and you still want to apply then better prepare the following:

Your Social Security Number or SSS you need that to prepare your future, you may not feel it now, but when you retire you will get at least a pension. If you don’t have one your chosen call center should be able to help you acquire one.

Tax Identification Number, we may not like paying taxes, but the laws, the law. So we really can’t do anything about it. Your company should help you acquire one as well if you don’t have one.

NBI Clearance, you gonna have to do this on your own, if you don’t have one. Go the the NBI head office and prepare to fall in line. Once you got a clearance it’s advisable to renew it every year, whether you need it or not.

You résumé, the document you need to advertise your self to the company that you want to work for.. It should include your education, and job experiences. Don’t put everything on it though. Make sure you leave some so that during the interview so that when the interviewer ask you to tell him something about you, you have a ready answer. Also try practicing to speak in English so that you won’t get tongue tied during the interview

Those are the things that you need to work in a call center. of course it doesn’t mean that you have the job when you passed the interview and exams. You have to pass the training first. Most of the time it’s 2 parts, first part is Accent training, where you learn how to speak English fluently with the right American accent, you’ll also learn about time zones, U.S. capital cities and State Abbreviation. After the Accent training, there’s the product training, here you will learn all there is to know to do your job well. Remember, there are things that you won’t learn in training, some of it you’ll learn on the floor.

So there you have it. all you needed to know and prepare if you want to work in a call center. It worked for me and I’m sure it’ll work for you.

You may also want to read Callcentergal’s Survival Pack for more on call centers.

Service that You Want to Forget

My wife and I love to eat. Every time we see a new restaurant we do our best to save up some extra cash and eat at the newly discovered place. Of course, TV shows helps us a lot in our decision making on what restaurant should we tried next.

If you watch QTV 11’s “The Beat”, then your familiar with Tonypet Gaba. He’s the show’s restaurants connoisseur and try out their mouth watering dishes. As loyal fans of the show, we try to visit each restaurant he visits and try the very same dishes he had tried. The only ones failed to visit are the ones that way too pricey for my comfort. But that rarely happens, most of the time the restaurants he visited has very affordable prices. Take “Kalye ni Juan” for example. The dishes were really good, and prices are really affordable. I think we spend less than a thousand for three people.

But of course there are places where the food is good, the ambiance is nice with very bad service. That’s where Mann Hann restaurant fits in. I’m talking about the one located in SM: Mall of Asia. Service was so lousy that I was tempted to ask the manager to remove the service charge form our bill. If my son didn’t ask me to accompany him outside I would have done it. Here’s what happen. We entered the restaurant and there are only three tables occupied. We took a booth and a waiter approached us. He wants to move the baby carriage to the side because there was no more space for people to walk through. Now I’m a very reasonable guy, and I would have given to his request with out hesitation but the problem is the place is practically empty and the space between our table and the next one is a good 3 feet away, so even if the baby carriage was there there’s enough space to walk through. I pointed this out and he gave me a look that he wants to fillet me. I stater him down and got on to business. I raised my hand to call the waiter as they were about 5 feet in front of me. Nobody approached us. So my wife waved her hand to get their attention,which is really unnessary as 2 waiters and their manager were looking at us. Still no one came. I was forced to raised my voice and said: “Wala bang lalapit sa amin?” That made them move. The incident was easily forgotten as our orders arrived. Every thing we ordered came out perfect. But the drinks hasn’t been bought yet. I asked the nearest waitress to follow up on our drinks. Which she promptly brought. While she was serving us our drinks she accidentally dropped a can of soda on our table. She picked it up and right it then moved on the next table. No “sorry”, no nothing. Wow! I was really beginning to lose it. It’s a good thing my son was with us and I don’t want him to see me go violent.

There are many restaurants that deserve to be patronized, but there are some who needs to be avoided. Unfortunately Mann Hann in Mall of Asia is included in the latter.