The PDA Users Group of Davao blog

The surprise for outsourcing companies is how deep the talent pool is in out-of-the-way cities like Davao. In fact, this type of town may be exactly what the industry is looking for, with a population of 1.4 million and 36 colleges and universities producing about 8,000 graduates a year. Now that the violence of the past has largely receded, Mr. Fournier and other outsourcing specialists hope call-center jobs, enabled by the advent of the Internet, will help Davao's economy diversify and grow; in Manila, call centers have created about 60,000 jobs in just a few years.
Like the rest of the Philippines, Davao is steeped in Americana. Local restaurants and stores bear names like Kini Rogers Chicken and The Tom Cruz Grillhaus. The mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, patrols Davao's streets on a Harley-Davidson look-alike and cultivates a grizzled, "vigilante" image; he calls himself Duterte Harry, after one of Clint Eastwood's tough-guy film roles.

All this kitschy linkage to U.S. pop culture seems to help make many Filipinos adept at outsourcing work. Nasdaq-listed PeopleSupport Inc., for example, intended to spend a month in Davao hiring staff for its call centers in Manila and Cebu, but it filled more than half its recruitment target after a week.

"People here already understand America and American English. What we're doing is giving them enough confidence to use it," says Mr. Fournier, a former airline executive who is chief operating officer of 3G Communications Inc.

Mr. Fournier also has recruited a diverse range of call-center agents for 3G's U.S. partner, Cyber City Teleservices Ltd., which opened Davao's first call center in October, creating more than 1,000 jobs for people to provide customer support for catalog companies, Internet-service providers and other businesses. Some recruits are Filipino expatriates returning from jobs abroad, while others are university graduates. A clutch of recent recruits included three local radio disc jockeys.

# posted by Jim @ 1:23:00 PM