It was another hot afternoon in college and I was happily browsing at the department lab.
I got a call on my mobile. It was from some arbitrary landline number from Chennai. The first thing that came to my mind was some call center calling up every poor Airtel customer to publicise some credit card or bank loan offer. It is the usual case when a sweet lady voice says "Good Afternoon sir. Would you be interested in a bank loan from ICICI bank?". I generally cut the call abruptly after I hear that common sentence!
This call had the same lady voice, but it started off with "Am I talking to Mr. Karthik?". Now this was different, as none of the usual call centres refer to Names (possibly because they do not have access to that piece of information).
Me: Ya
X: We are calling from Alphatech (or some name that sounded similar).
Me: Hmmm
X: Would you like to consider working in a multi-national call center firm? (!!)
I was flabbergasted at what i heard! Are they offering a job to a random person that they were calling? And that too in the second sentence of a conversation - a Job offer. I was aware that there were so many new call centres opening up everywhere and that they were always in search of people who can work. But this was pretty much an extreme way of offering jobs!
I was about to reply saying that "I already have a great job offer with me, and would probably consider your offer if your job profile or the pay package interests me much more. :)" (obviously in a greedy sarcastic tone). A call center would not probably find a reply to that question!
Me: No thank you, but I am not interested.
No more words came out of my mouth in that sleepy mood and I am now wishing I could have had more fun in that conversation.
The rate of growth of the IT industry impresses me. No wonder they find the required man power here in India, with so many unemployed graduates who would be satisfied with the salary that a call centre would pay on an average.
(Maybe they got the job through such calls! Who knows?)
