John Linton
Exetel has almost totally pursued a policy of employing computer science/MIS graduates as its support desk personnel and then allowing them to progressively move towards their desired career objectives in relatively short periods of time via increasing responsibilities in data base programming, systems administration, network engineering or one of the many technical projects and implementations we are continually involved in and replacing them with a new graduate (who invariably has the same aspirations).
Because of Exetel's month on month growth it's been possible to accommodate the career development needs of almost all of the people we've employed over the past four years - but not all - and we have lost some people because we couldn't make suitable career development positions available to them quickly enough. That is a great pity and it's becoming more obvious that, if we keep employing new graduates in Australia on the same basis we will always have to contend with this issue.
While engineering graduates with good transcripts and a 'heavy personal involvement' in ADSL/routers/PCs/etc make very fast learners and are 'experts' as opposed to 'script jockeys' in terms of most help desk personnel their desire to move on to other responsibilities after 6 - 12 months makes for an unwelcome continual learning curve in managing an adequate support function.
Almost two years ago we hired two Sri Lankan nationals to work for Exetel based in their homes in Colombo. we did this partly because of the time difference between Australia and Sri Lanka (5 hours) which allowed us to extend our 'support hours' and partly because the same calibre of person (in terms of degree/transcript) welcomed the opportunity of a career working in the communications industry and was, we understood, prepared to be more patient than 'Australian' graduates in the speed at which their career developed.
To hire people in another country is not an easy task and we probably took longer in doing it than we should have - in the event it was almost a year before we actually made the two job offers having gone down a few 'blind alleys' during that time and receiving a lot of, what proved to be, very bad advice. We brought the two selected personnel to Australia for a month for familiarisation with our systems and the requirements of the positions and they then returned to Sri Lanka and began the process of becoming adept and confident in handling the tasks assigned to them which gradually increased in complexity as time passed.
We purchased computers and ADSL connections for them in Colombo and they had the same access to all of Exetel's data base systems as every other employee - including all of the help desk tickets.
Twice in the past two years the Support manager has gone to Sri Lanka to sit with each of them to familiarise them with ever more demanding aspects of supporting Exetel's customers and multi-daily telephone and email and 'sms' contact is a standard part of the operation.
Some 12 months ago we sent Mitel handsets to each of the Sri Lankan engineers which operated as 'office extensions' to the Mitel VoIP PBX we have in North Sydney and allowing them to become part of various support queues taking customer calls 'live' instead of only dealing with customers and carriers via email.
Both of the Sri Lankan engineers will return to Australia in early January 2008 for familiarisation with the most advanced processes and procedures we have implemented and we will hire a third Colombo based (work from home) engineer in the next month or so. Annette and I will also visit Colombo in February to meet with the Australian High Commission and various commercial entities to better understand what is involved in setting up additional facilities in Colombo - and to determine whether or not that is in fact practical.
At the Exetel Christmas party I advised our Australian personnel that we were going to change the ways we operated in terms of entry level hiring in to Exetel by only hiring new support engineers in Sri Lanka and possibly establishing an office in Colombo to ensure that all of our current Australian staff could continue to progress from customer support to other functions within Exetel within their desired, and reasonable time frames.
I've been questioned over the past two years, and several times since last Friday's "announcement", about my "loyalty to Australia" in "moving jobs that should be offered to Australians overseas." There is no simple answer to such questions but my rationale is simple:
1) Exetel, and more importantly, Exetel's customers need support personnel who are prepared to spend more time in providing support (and therefore becoming better able to do that) than most young Australian engineers are happy to spend - and no - I don't believe hiring less qualified and intelligent personnel is a sensible approach to solving that problem.
2) Exetel can ameliorate the same desires of too rapid career progression in Sri Lanka by paying something like three times more than an engineer would earn in more senior positions in that country as a legitimate 'quid pro quo' for doing customer support for a year to eighteen months longer than a young Australian engineer is happy to spend.
3) By paying more and by providing the opportunity of working from home (with full facilities paid by Exetel) we make a sensible contribution to another country's economy that directly benefits both that country and Australia and directly benefits Exetel's customers by providing much higher skilled support personnel with much more knowledge than we can do any other way.
4) By keeping highly intelligent and highly skilled people in customer support longer we increase the level of customer satisfaction we provide to end users and we do that at a lower cost which also directly benefits the end customer because it contributes to allowing Exetel to provide services at a lower operational cost.
To date, and it's still very early in the implementation of this program, there is every indication that this approach to directly employing personnel in other countries (as opposed to using some sort of 'managed service' in another country) will benefit everyone concerned.
So, as an 'immigrant Australian' I don't feel at all 'disloyal to Australia' and as a father of five children I see no problem in an Australian company employing people in other countries if that provides benefits to everyone concerned.