The once amiable 3 Global Services which once boasted of clients like Hutchison Global for both front end customer services & back end technical broadband services still is able to attract talent albeit with a ton of salt & needing sufficient in reserve
An organization which once mired itself as the epitome or cornerstone of high class customer service, CSAT & good practices now finds itself at the crossroads reaching out for sustenance & redemption due to its entanglement in heinous malpractices.
I’d recently been a victim of their high handedness & standoffish with damning consequences. A consultant had approached me for a role in customer services & with my frailty besides an obsession with captive BPO’s sort of sucked me into the offer. But its not pot luck that has brought me far & wide in the BPO realm so I took this head on & with utmost seriousness hoping to be a part of the overall opportunity & moolah to follow.
Usually, BPO recruitment nowadays is very streamlined & methodical but here with TechM, it just wasn’t so maybe because due to cost controls, most of the selection is outsourced to brick & mortar recruiters like Equations, Connections(main suppliers) & others(answers, The High Road etc). The untold equation(*no pun intended) is that unless you’re noticed or tapped by the first two brothers/sisters, Tech Mah isn’t going to hire you for nuts!
Having eased through both the V&A & Operations, it was a cakewalk as opposed to a real grind anyway which I’d expected under the new management. But matters relating to the final selection was so shrouded in secrecy that it almost felt like a blemish to ask the rate of knots things were progressing. It was almost at lightning speed, the way things were happening!
Nothing succeeds like success & on the final day of receiving the "offer." I put this in quotes because honestly speaking I didn’t know whether I’d receive brickbats or bouquets anyway although I honestly felt on the borderlines! However, the whole episode was so akin to important but painful operation procedure or therapy with a wait for an eligible organ donor.
Firstly, I was given a huge set of forms, plus an affidavit sheet to fill & return to a scrawny girl from HR & Admin. Being hardly amused, I posed a volley of questions which she answered fairly well until it got to the nitty gritty of transport arrangements in which case, she very conveniently chose to pass the buck!
Another strange thing in this co is that I was constantly asked who was my SPOC! Now, we all know that HR hires its own personnel in plenty but in reality disposes dubious or ambiguous work functions at best so to expect a potential entrant to recall HR names was expecting too much.
Still I managed to blurt out one of the names unsure whether he’d be my knight in shinning armor or the coup de grace here. I met him & was told to wait as there a final meeting with an Operations Manager. Now, the futility or rather the gravity of their operations(again no pun intended*) just stung me.
Can you imagine on a day of offer collection, you have to give an extra interview totally unbeknown to you? It was a day of document submission as well but that my consultant/recruiter botched beforehand feigning ignorance of company policies & procedures so I was out on a limb here.
My anxiety & vexation was further compounded by my folly of actually waiting for human presence from operations to present himself/herself despite expressing a conscious unwillingness to do so. From eavesdropping & conversations that overshot, I came to know that operations was unwilling to take a call on my case. It wasn’t a senior level assignment, just advisor/agent level probably the saving grace could have been that they were paying above market salaries.
The repercussions were terrible, not only did the designated Operations Manager a no show no effort was made to reign in or reinstate a replacement. But this not being a day when I’d taken leave nor did I have any intention to take an unscheduled leave, this was an badly unintended rebuff for genuine reasons. Having reached my workplace 4hrs later, I’d to do a curtailed 5hr shift at night(10pm~3am). Obviously I’d no choice due to Tech Mah’s scant for respect & their hegemony holding me from 3p~6pm that day.
Of course it doesn’t end there because my Team Managers at my workplace weren’t chuffed at my procrastination the day before or the authenticity of my inane excuses for my profligacy the night before & detained me hard! I’d to work compulsorily for 2 days with an extra 2hrs thrown in post my regular shifts. That was a real bummer & I’ve scars to show for it
The moral of the story is "Stay the hell away from Tech Mahindra." They can’t do you any favors if you enter & they’ll sure as hell make sure your journey is a road of thorns!