MTC Academy: Training Davao agents to be more competitive

DAVAO City is enjoying the arrival of multinational contact centers and the sprouting of local start-ups in business process outsourcing (BPO) industry as never before.

And to sustain its growth, the Technical Education Skills Development Authority (Tesda) is throwing support for the pool of local talents through scholarship grants.

For this year, Tesda has shelled out a total of P10 million for the scholarship program of those aspiring to become part of the BPO industry. The initiative is envisioned to further develop the skills of the contact center agents and give them the competitive edge to land a job.

Tesda has appointed training centers to become partners in its goal to produce more competitive agents. Some of the local partners are the Jobs Academy, JIB e-Academy and Solutions and MTC Academy.

Glan Carlo Gawat, marketing officer and trainer of the MTC Academy, said they have been contracted by Tesda as an official training center for seven years now for medical transcription. Since then, MTC, had produced a total of 810 competitive medical transcriptionists.

This year MTC offered a bigger break for those who are chasing greener pastures in the BPO industry by opening last May a series of training for contact center agents geared towards developing core skills, and eventually eradicating the regional accent of the trainees to enable them speak like real natives of America.

"This (training) is a finishing course. What we train are already skilled Dabawenyos. We only correct their mispronounced words," Gawat said, adding that at the end of every training course, there's an improved pronunciation among the trainees.

Gawat said those trainees who are undergoing this program would have to render at least a hundred hours of training course or equivalent to three weeks.

MTC Academy, as a partner in this endeavor, is furnished with necessary equipment to increase the level of proficiency of the scholarship grantees in terms of oral communications through the conduct of simulations emulating the actual workplace of a contact center.

"The role of scholarship is for you (trainees) to be employed," Gawat said.

The institutions inked partnership through a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with six multinational and local firms where the products of the program can possibly get an employment at the end of the training. Three of the six firms include Now Outsourcing Services Davao, Alternative Innovations Inc, and Cyber CityTeleservices.

The MOA signing with Sutherland Global Services and Concentrix is underway, according to Gawat.

He said the government has allocated MTC Academy with 480 vouchers for call center finishing course, but the number of vouchers already availed is way lower compared to the remaining ones.

This program has so far produced 25 graduates with each has found employment to contact centers here.

"We still have more than 400 vouchers," he said.

Gawat said the institution has six trainers for the finishing course of call center who are experienced on their own field in BPO, which makes them adept at rendering trainings to the beginners.

In availing the scholarship, an applicant goes through a tight selection process.

"We give them assessment on reading comprehension, speaking, and listening. After which, an interview will follow," he said.

Through the trainings, Davao City is becoming the most desired destination for multinational firm locators for its contact center facilities, primarily because of the available pool of talents who are globally competitive. (Antonio L. Colina IV)