With President Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo as guest-of-honor, ExcelAsia recently celebrated its fourth year of operations with the inauguration of its fifth and largest site to date in Eastwood City.

An industry-leading human resources solutions company specializing on sourcing, recruitment, training and business consultation for more than 60 employers in the still young but rapidly growing business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country, ExcelAsia has become the training ground of choice for people seeking not just jobs but real careers with BPO service providers.

Since its founding in 2005, the company has trained over 20,000 individuals for a variety of BPO jobs and is currently training an average of 2,500 applicants every month. ExcelAsia also helped pioneer
“near-hire” training, a special program for applicants who already passed initial screening but need to strengthen their communication skills. According to ExcelAsia President Rita Trillo-Ugarte, the said program boasts of an “80 percent success rate” for trainees hired by their BPO clients.

Being a very vocal supporter of the BPO industry as a whole, President Arroyo’s Training for Work Scholarship Program is providing funding for this program that is being administered by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority or TESDA.

“We are honored that President Arroyo was able to grace the inauguration of our latest facility.” Trillo-
Ugarte enthuses. “Her initiatives to support the industry are at the core of ExcelAsia’s success.”

In partnership with property developer Megaworld Properties, Trillo-Ugarte admits that Eastwood Cyberpark was selected as ExcelAsia’s latest training facility because it’s a popular location for BPO service providers, most, if not all of which are their clients but also because of the large labor pool in the area and proximity to numerous educational institutions.

Because of ExcelAsia’s “near-hire” training’s success and the company’s own expectations to see more trainees applying for the program as industry demand continues to expand, the company also announced the formal launch of ExcelAsiaJOBS, its new online recruitment job site.

“We created ExcelAsiaJOBS to facilitate the process of identifying and applying for attractive employment opportunities,” Trillo-Ugarte points out. “New graduates, individuals intending to shift careers and professionals from all walks of life will find the site to be a great way to effectively and cost-efficiently conduct the search for great career opportunities.”

Jonathan De Luzuriaga, Executive Director for Industry Affairs of the Business Processing Association
of the Philippines (BPAP) says the BPO industry enjoys a high employment rate of 85 percent
since 2006, a figure he expects to increase to 90 percent by the end of the year.

Luzriaga added that ExcelAsia has helped professionalize the industry not just in terms of “improving grammar skills and pronunciation” but also when it comes to things like “confidence-building and the importance of staying in one company.” He also noted that with the “sudden surge in non-voice activities” that fall under the category of knowledge process outsourcing or KPO, ExcelAsia is also addressing part of these skills set that he calls “the next wave of growth in the BPO industry.”