BPO Sector in Kenya
So, I’d sent out a couple of questions to Nick Nesbitt of Kencall asking him about the BPO sector in Kenya and what he thought of it and I finally got a response to some of my questions and decided to post them here for your consumption.
All indications are that as this global recession continues to take hold and as job losses continue to mount, outsourcing is going to keep growing because (frankly) western workers are becoming too expensive to maintain and if consumers permanently cut down on their spending habits, company revenues are going to remain low and they’re going to have to permanently cut costs. The way to permananently keep costs down is to either no hire very much or outsoursce non-essentially work to much cheaper locations around the world.
So, here are the questions I came up with and the answers that were provided. Hopefully, you’ll find them informative in some way and if you are familiar with this industry, feel free to add any additional points which you may find pertinent.
The labour market is flooded with over 50,000 new graduates each year, many of whom will not find employment. Such a large pool of enthusiastic, high-skilled graduates presents huge possibilities for the services industry, not just in call centres but across the existing outsourcing spectrum and beyond. Kenya has the potential to offer services from the simplest to the most advanced outsourced processes and moving from providing BPO services to KPO. I see BPO services making up an increasingly large proportion of GDP over coming years.
The main problems we faced during KenCall’s early existence are detailed in the HBS case study
3) What is your assessment of the government’s commitment when it comes to trying to turn Kenya into a serious contender in the future BPO industry?
Before we started KenCall there was little knowledge of outsourcing as an industry in business or government. The fact we were willing to invest in a non-existent market and had significant support, took us and the government on a big learning curve. The Government has really opened its eyes to the possibilities now and the floor is open for Kenya to build a significant competitive prospect on the outsourcing world stage. You only have to look at what Egypt has achieved over the last few years to see what can happen when the government gets behind an industry.
Thankfully the Kenyan government fully supports outsourcing and has made numerous important movements and investments to drive the industry forward. The first is making outsourcing a central part of the country’s Vision 2030 plan. Outsourcing is to become one of Kenya’s most important business sectors over the next 10-20 years. It has also invested heavily on the groundwork that will make this plan a reality, for example: bringing in McKinsey to advise on how to catalyse industry growth; laying out the regulatory environment for outsourcing; and investing in getting Kenya connected to fibre optic cable.
4) Who are your main competitors? Are they cheaper outsourcing locations like India and the Philippines and if they are, what is your competitive advantage against countries like that whose industries are far ahead of Kenya’s? Is it purely price or is it more than that?
Due to the maturity of BPO in places like India and the Philippines, Kenya has the opportunity to develop its industry from a more advanced starting point. Our highly educated labour pool and wage levels mean we can develop and offer many high-end services but still at a lower price point than most domestic outsourcers. Kenya is more than labour arbitrage, it’s about offering top quality expertise at an affordable price.
5) In comparing Kenya to India, the one thing I keep hearing about Kenya is that they simply do not have the technical skills to compete with a country like India that churns out millions of engineers and college graduates each year. Do you agree with this viewpoint or not? Azim Premji, the founder of WIPRO has frequently said that this was India’s key advantage: It’s large, well educated labor force that had strong skills in math and science. Does this labor force exist in Kenya today?
Kenya’s labour pool grows by over 50,000 new graduates a year so of course it would be crazy to try and compare numbers with India. But it’s not really about who’s got the biggest labour pool nowadays. India started off offering the lowest of the low costs to do the most menial jobs for organisations. The trouble was attrition of course – if you give a graduate low-level jobs they will not stay with you for long. India has climbed the value chain over the years to counteract this problem. Kenya too is in a position to harness existing high-end skills and develop sector expertise attractive to clients around the world. An example of this is the agricultural phoneline we are building to enable farmers access to farming expertise and up-to-date price and logistical information. Such a service would not work if the people on the phones had no prior experience in the field.
6) When looking for potential clients, do you target small or medium businesses or is your focus on larger fortune 500 companies?
When we first started out we had to do a lot of legwork in outbound sales. Most contact centres you speak to will have ‘cut their teeth’ in hard sales at some point. At this stage, as with any small business, any client was gratefully received. As we have grown we have recognised our strengths and now look to play to those. We are great at customer service and high-level technical services and also in the online space – something that will expand exponentially now Kenya is fibre ready. We have found what we offer to be most attractive to the larger end of the scale and we expect to see continued growth in this area.
**I want to add an additional point here. I was talking to my sister last night and she works in New York and deals with a lot of Indian companies whom she outsources work to. She said that whenever an Indian company comes to her office to pitch a sale, one of the main things she looks for is whether they already have local businesses as clients because her experience has shown her that before you can expand internationally, you first need to start locally. Is this a strategy Kencall is employing? i.e. did you begin by trying to get Kenyan companies first or was this never part of your strategy?
Of course, it’s important to make our name known locally. So much in Kenya is done over mobile phones so offering our services over here is a great opportunity. Working with big companies like Telkom Kenya and Tigo Tanzania allows us to show-off what we can do and also allows us to start conversations with big brands elsewhere, for example Orange through Telkom. Having said this, outsourcing on the whole has not yet gained mass popularity amongst local businesses. Domestic interest in BPO services will continue to increase as the importance of customer service and retention gains creedence.
7) I’ve been looking at the Indian BPO sector for a couple of years now and the pioneer entrepreneurs of this industry seem to have encountered the same obstacles that you must be encountering in Kenya today, e.g. corruption, poor infrastructure, red tape & bureaucracy, etc, etc…; Somehow, the Indians were able to overcome these obstacles and build successful companies. Do you think you can overcome the obstacles in Kenya in the same way that the Indians did? Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of Infosys has said that India’s closed economy was actually a blessing in disguise for them because without the ability to import things like computers and software, they were forced to learn how to build their own and when the economy finally opened up, the knowledge they had acquired (through this forced self-sufficiency) prepared them well to take on the bigger projects from companies in America (in particular).
Since Kenya has never really had this kind of self-sufficiency is it a big disadvantage or can it be easily overcome?
We have faced many challenges both in setting up KenCall and during its first years of operation but we’ve overcome these now. And because we’ve faced them it means that many new players will have an easier entry into the industry. But this isn’t a bad thing, the more credible players that start competing for business abroad, the more international companies will sit up and take notice. Creating this critical mass of suppliers is the next big challenge for Kenya’s BPO industry. However, the advent of fibre in Kenya this July should prove a major catalyst to reaching that point.
In terms of self sufficiency, by no means has KenCall been shielded from the realities of doing business. You’re right, the country hasn’t been isolated like India, but companies that want to be successful often feel isolated as they push the boundaries of what’s been done before. KenCall had to ensure its own self-sufficiency as it grew.Our other challenge was maintaining business continuity, for example to protect against power-outages, we have built-in UPS and two separate diesel generators – it would take a lot to bring us offline nowadays.
This is quite revealing. I wasn’t aware that Kenya was churning out 50,000 graduates per annum. I think Kenya is reaching the critical point where we would experience an economic revival.
Britain where i stay with a population almost twice that of Kenya and with many more Universities graduates about 250,000 gradutes per annum.
Focus now needs turned to increasing quality of these Graduates as well as providing the neccesary tools like Land, Fibre, Transport.
With regards to BPOS and IT the government to create a Law to govern Kenya’s planned silicon valley in Athi River. This should offer Tax Incentives as well as Power subsidies to any Business Venture relocated to this Area. Riverwood should also be moved to this region so as to allow for the expansion of studios which are currently squeezed on River Road.
Its not all about BPOS. Its about using the transfer of Technology BPOS bring and using the projected $125Billions in earnings to create other IT Ventures.
The city center should be left for Retailers,Bankers,Brokers,Politicians and Corporates
The rest of us should move to Digital villages.
Kudos KE this is what your blog is ment to do
http://www.africafeed.com/post.....nd-funding
I thought the above article would be an interesting juxtaposition against this thread. My point, the BPO scene in Africa is encouraging but frankly I think it is tiresome when we try to photocopy entrepreneurial initiatives generated in other emerging economies. Many of these initiatives are very cultural specific, domestic market specific and social millieu specific.
I continue to be of the STRONG opinion that Africans must create and innovate on their own terms and especially focus on that basket of goods and services FOR DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION. We will never outcompete China and India in the export driven economy, and that model has already proven unsustainable in its quest for the increasingly elusive middle class Western consumer.
What domestic “market” is this you keep mentioning when we all know that the spending power in much of Africa is not that high.
Take for instance kenya. They 10 million people (which I think is an understated number) cannot even afford to feed themselves. So, if people can’t even afford to buy food, what on earth can you sell to them?
In order to grow your economy, you have to export, especially if you are still a poor, third world country because the domestic market just won’t have the spending power.
Why be so parochial in a world that is becoming more global and more interconnected?
Great piece KE
Sorry KE but this is where you and I diametrically disagree.
There are tons and tons and tons of things to sell to Africans, and frankly I think your mindset is part of what holds Africa back.
Entrepreneurship is seeing opportunity in everything, exploiting it and making profit based on calculated risk, judgement and market intelligence.
People are making tons of money each day in Africa, and those who are making it legitimately are doing so by knowing and understanding the marketplace and catering to its needs. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist, or well connected, or exceptionally talented to run a successful business in Africa and make good money. Enough of us are doing it and I speak for myself in saying I am neither a rocket scientist, not well connected and not exceptionally talented.
Sijui:
Okay. So, you tell me where you see these opportunities. i.e. what things would you see selling and selling well.
Nice I like. Kumbe you rub shoulders with the high & mighty
1) All things mobile technology; cell phones will become the credit cards and bank accounts for Africans. Typical example of exploiting a unique economic and social phenomenon….Africans do not conduct personal commerce the same way Americans or Europeans or Japanese do so quit trying to fit a square peg in to a round hole and address the market need not what conventional wisdom tells you it should be. Those companies that are on the cutting edge of mobile solutions be it money transfer, trading/auction platforms for rural small scale farmers,mobile banking that is independent of a financial institution will be the next billionaires same way the pioneering cell phone companies were.
2) Wireless and web technology……same way Africa leapfrogged the need for copper landlines, advances in last mile technology (Wimax; 3G; 4G) for communications, leisure, commerce for the rural population.
3) Micro-insurance and micro-mortgage lending. Micro-finance is now passe, the next goldmine is providing affordable insurance, mortgages and investment banking to the Jua-Kali-Mama Mboga segment. Governments all around Africa are starting to see the brilliance of setting up parallel pension, income tax and investment schemes for the informal sector because this is where the lion’s share of untapped and unproductive $$$ in the African economy is.
4)Agro-processing and agri-business: the most labor intensive and thus biggest employer in our economies. Specialization and increased productivity for the domestic market and regional export; the Malawi example is a case in point where an internal focus on food self-sufficiency and regional export rather than international cash crop exports has fuelled economic growth with a broad multiplier effect.
Sijui.
I agree with you 100%. That is where the true wealth of Africa is. KE has been intoxicated by the United States, infact he is more American than the Americans themselves. So he aims to swallow lock, stock and barrel everything the west does. He will also compare Kenya with Google and Yahoo something equivalent to comparing himself to a 4yr old. The new emerging economies and some old ones like Japan excelled by going against the grain and using home grown cultural peculiarities to create a niche for themselves.
Rwanda through Gacaca, India through IT, China through cheap manufacture and many others have distinguished themselves by taking into account their own peculiarities to move forward. Kenya can do it by embracing jua kali. Thank you for your brilliant insight.
Sijui:
You still haven’t addressed my fundamental point and it is about individual GDP and spending power. All the things you mentioned are not being created as part of an esoteric exercise. Entrepreneurs who create them will have to sell them to somebody and if they can’t sell enough of them (because the spending power isn’t there, they won’t make money).
If you look at 3rd world countries that have become middle-income countries, the truth of the matter is that they have done it by exporting. Why? because the spending power for the goods they were making or producing did not exist within their own countries.
I’m not sure why you keep missing this point. African countries need to increase their levels of productivity so that they can start exporting goods OUTSIDE of their countries and into countries that have much higher spending power. Then, as their countries become richer, the local spending power will rise and they can start selling within the local market, but when 10 million Kenyans are starving, you can’t talk to me about selling mobile phone technology to them or offering them investment banking services. Yes, they will be those who can afford those services, but the vast majority still can’t and that’s why you have to export.
This is why the focus on Africa is now hinging on the export of minerals. Oil discoveries in Uganda and gold in Tanzania. These are goods that can be exported around the world, at very high prices & the money then used to build up the respective countries.
Jellyfish:
Rwanda through Gacaca? Do you know what Gacaca is?
India through IT? They’re exporting their intellectual power to foreign companies.
China through manufacturing? Again, they’re exporting.
So, again, you get out of poverty by exporting. Then, once the income from those exports starts to create a middle-class with spending power, you can then turn around and start focusing on the local market.
KE.
First no one is saying we should not export. However Sijui is making a very important point. We should not aim to export at the expense of our own needs. For example it doesn’t make sense to export food to others when we remain hungry.
He is also very right about the danger of aping other people. I will give you a real example. In the 70’s Denmark which was a very technologically advanced country in Agriculture tried to compete with the US in maize production. The USA through it’s cornbelt planted corn in an area several times bigger than the whole of Denmark. Some scholars in Denmark then said well maybe we can improve the quality of our maize. Well with increasing economies of scale & specialization in the USA even high quality maize couldn’t compete. So Denmark shifted focus to dairy products and concentrated on exporting it to it’s neighbours and other countries with milk deficiencies. They also diversified their economy to go into niche products.
Now with regard to exports. Africa has been exporting since independence. Infact the reason colonial powers came to Africa was mainly economic. The major problem with Africa’s exports has been value. We don’t get the right value for our products. You know that the structure of the world economy is still very unfavourable to Africa’s exports. There is also the sticky issue regarding agricultural subsidies which distorts the world markets for Africa’s agriculture. The Doha round has been stuck in negotiations for decades. So even if Africa became the most efficient food producer it wouldn’t make alot of money selling in the world market due to depressed prices. However it would make perfect sense if Africa produced food and sold it within Africa for food deficit areas. A good example is Malawi which is now exporting maize to Kenya & Zimbabwe and getting paid in dollars. Last I checked a dollar from Kenya or Finland is still a dollar.
Now regarding culture. Let’s take a leaf from sports. Why is Brazil so good in soccer? Why is Kenya so good in steeplechase or Cuba so good in baseball? The answer is culture and self belief. This is the reason the Japanese lead the world in robotics technology. It is the reason the Dutch are the best at building dykes & reclaiming land from the sea. It is also the reason Israel is one of the best nations in security related issues. What is my point here? Everyone is given a gift or peculiarity which can be used to generate income.
Finally let me just say this. I used the word Gacaca. I wouldn’t use the word if I didn’t know it’s meaning. My point was that Rwanda’s development can be attributed to it’s ability to recover from the genocide which was greatly aided by the Gacaca traditional courts. You can learn more about them if you listen to Kagame discuss how they did it. The main point is Rwanda used a homegrown peculiar system to solve it’s problems which created a conducive environment for development.
On India and IT it is important to realise that though India has been exporting IT services it is also a huge consumer of the same domestically. TATA has grown by tapping it’s own domestic market before delving into the international arena. China has also done the same. Also China is now transforming it’s economy to spur domestic demand because eventually all that exporting has to be translated into an improved standard of living. Remember also that the US economy depends on itself for continued growth. So Sijui is right that we have to find domestic demand build on that and then eventually launch into the international arena. You also rubbish Kenyan success stories and glorify western or Indian success stories. I have never seen you give concrete and precise or detailed proposals to Kenyans on what or where they should invest their money or energies.
If you really are a Kenyan entreprenuer I would think you would be at the forefront of promoting Kenyan businesses, asking for specific reforms e.g. reducing businesses licenses, improving investor protections, free trade zones e.t.c. Instead I see you rubbishing Kenyan efforts and where they are very successful you are silent. I note that even in your interview with Nesbitt the tone was baiting. The very first question about it being only English speaking as an advantage already showed this derogatory attitude for everything Kenyan. Anyway you have a right to be negative or to write anything you wish but I have to say you dont have the best interests of Kenya at heart, or your attitude to Kenyans is very patronizing.
Jellyfish
what
.
I see u still drinking koolaid!
Sometimes I wonder whether u understand what you are talking about! You say “.. kenya can do it by embracing jua kali..”
You must be a joke !
BTW Jua kali has been very successful with calif records, the youth do embrace juakali?
But you make my day
Mwalimu.
How are you my good friend. Please send me a crate of Koolaid because I love the stuff. You should try it it’s good for you because it improves your IQ or makes you demented whichever is the case but you wont be without ideas.
Yes Jua Kali is the way to go. The problem with you guys is you still think jua Kali means sitting in the sun with a hammer and a piece of corrugated iron sheet hammering away. Perhaps because of your education and international exposure you tend to look down on such work. Before I educate you with koolaid read the history of HongKong. Hong Kong some decades ago had the same jua Kali areas as Kenya complete with rickshaws and what we call mama mboga. Today that industry has moved to hightech production.
My point is have you seen some of the Manyangas in Nairobi that are brightly coloured? Well the body work is done by Jua Kali artisans. Today that industry has moved into the millions of shillings and is modernizing. Some of the mechanics in this jua Kali could teach a mechanical engineering student a few things about getting a car to move with scarce resources. Alot of other products ranging from lanterns, watering cans, pots and pans, furniture, clothes, services such as hair dressing, manicures, pedicures, food related industries e.t.c. are what you would in a derogatory manner call jua Kali.
However when you visit Nairobi one of this days you may find some of your friends whom you left in Jua Kali have mobile phones, nice furniture, are sending their kids to school with money made from jua kali, and have internet access from laptops they purchased with jua kali money. Now they will even engage with you on twitter because the fibre-optic cables have arrived and speeds are improving and perhaps buy you a tusker with nyama choma. We in the diaspora have to respect those guys at home and help them. Dont think because you live in California or Texas that you can act all pompous and all knowing like a sage and look down on your fellow country men. No they may be poor but they are making progress. It is this indigenous businesses that are powering our economy and will propel us to the next stage of development. I can assure you quite confidently that Jua Kali is responsible for a very large portion of Kenya’s GDP. If the govt and private sector invest in this sector you will see very rapid development. This is what Equity bank have done and the results speak for themselves. We in the west sometimes forget that what we see here was built by the people here. Ask any millionaire and they will tell you if you want to be rich you have got to start small and respect humility. Pompous people dont get rich.
Anyway Mwalimu welcome to Koolaid world it is full of fantasy and reality mixed in with a healthy dose of madness but it is a healthy form of madness. Do have a wonderful day and dont forget to send the crate of koolaid.
Both KE and Sijui have a point.
KE, kenyans spending power is low, but its not all Kenyans who cannot spend and for most the situation is reversible. Its all a matter of lack of knowledge and finance e.g I have seen mama’s who could not feed their children move to being able to not only feed but also educate and build comfortable housing, this is mainly facilitated by microfinance institutions that guides and teaches them on saving, spending and moving foward. it can be done.
Secondly, when you think “there is no spending power so we cannot sell to the local market” you are limiting the opportunity available. Most Countries that have made it including China and India started by manufacturing for their local consumption then discovered importation on local saturation.
In Kenya, look at the mobile phone industry, when it all started we could not afford phones, only parents had these phone, yet even without much improvement in personal income today even grandparents and school children have phones. If telco companies used your argument they would have opted out of this market.
The best performing companies locally do well by selling locally here am looking at Equity, EABL, Safaricom etc, these are the Top companies and they get their money from the Kenyans of all social status. Also individuals like Muguku (of the 1 day old chicks) have become wealthy by selling to the same population.
Our most undoing is lack of knowledge especially for the rural folk, and overdepedency on foreign products which is all about attitude and beliefs in our social fabric. Thats besides the high energy costs, poor communication and transport infrastructure, corruption, poor governance, weak legal system, poor governance and poor education.
JELLYFISH
Come on…decode my last post…then we can talk.
Otherwise its juakali…of (thikha leave prode ductions).
KE let me focus on the spending power aspect of your argument. The industries and sectors I mentioned are the VERY ONES that have demonstrated the depth of spending power by the average mwananchi who relatively speaking is ‘poor.’
Your basic premise is that Kenyans have low purchasing power, my point is that clearly industries and sectors like telecommunications have thrived based on a low per capita purchasing power but a broad and deep penetration that results in billions of dollars.
Hence my point focus on the low per capita purchasing power but broad depth in terms of market penetration since this has already proven to be a viable and sustainable economic model.
Your other point is important i.e. increasing productivity or in plain english ensuring people have jobs so that they can afford to buy things.
I look at this from an entrepreneurs standpoint and not from a broader macro-economic context which perhaps is warranted.
My point remains the same, there is plenty of money to be made based on the existing purchasing power of poor Kenyans. Those who are very successful in Africa have figured out how to exploit the paradox of the market i.e. selling goods and services to millions of poor people. From a broader macroeconomic context I still believe the silver bullet remains building a domestic economy based on domestic supply and demand…….cater to the existing demand which is under exploited and then work on the supply which I agree probably means getting the most amount of people employed through means such as orientation towards exports. I just don’t believe the latter is a pre-condition as you do.
And I second and third MrS. Wafula’s point about leaving money on the table because Kenyans are poor so let us first concentrate on richer external consumers first and then based on the windfall from that and commensurate increase in domestic purchasing power we can go back to that.
Again I look at this from an entrepreneurs perspective, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush plus others have made a killing opting for the first rather than the second so why dither?
There is no doubt that the Asian examples have shown the transformative power of building domestic purchasing power on the back of servicing external demand however that window of opportunity is very finite as the current global economic meltdown has shown. And in Africa’s case there has been an OVER-EMPHASIS on catering to external demand albeit with very little productivity and hence nothing to show for it and VERY LITTLE to ZERO emphasis on domestic demand. And since I am one of those who do not believe in waiting for a conducive political and economic environment to emerge, I follow Donald Rumsfeld’s advice ‘you go to war with the army you have not the one you want.’
Sijui:
I will forgive you for quoting Donald Rumsfeld. The war in Iraq turned into a disaster so I’m not sure he’s the guy to be quoting, but let’s move on.
So, tell me about the consumer market in Ghana and where you see your business expanding to within that African region.
I suppose when I read your viewpoints you remind me of a guy like Alieu Conteh, the Gambian entrepreneur who built a mobile phone company in the Congo, right in the middle of that country’s civil war.
According to this article below, Conteh’s company now has 3 million customers and is valued at $1.6 billion. So, it can be done, even against great odds:
Link to story on Conteh: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/.....es-in-drc/
**btw – send me an email @kenyanentrepreneur@gmail.com. I’d like to talk to you about the company you are trying to set up down there.
Jellyfish:
I don’t think I’m being patronizing. I do like to ask hard hitting questions and I have found that most of the people I’ve interviewed don’t mind those hard hitting questions. To really get to the meat of how they formed these companies, you have to ask these questions. You can’t just throw up a bunch of fluff questions because you’ll end up with a boring story that has no substance.
And I have another piece coming up on a Kenyan entrepreneur who has become a power seller on ebay. So, I believe that I am really making an effort to find these Kenyan entrepreneurs and to tell their stories, but like I’ve said before, I do my homework and I’m not going to waste my time talking to people who are making money through political connections. I’m not going to waste time talking to the founders of Equity bank or Transcentury or to someone like Biwott or Gideon Moi.
I’m also not going to be like the other Kenyan business blogs, which just throw up a bunch of numbers about these multinational companies and call that business reporting. e.g. Barclays’ banks earnings are down 15% or Kengen’s bond has raised 10billion shillings; blah, blah, blah.
I want to find out about the personal journey’s of these entrepreneurs and in order to do that I have to extract these answers out of them.
KE,
In response………still money on the table in Ghana, very, very high competition in our line of work that keeps us nimble. Our strategy continues to be excellent quality hardware and customer service then dirt cheap service fees and hardware variety i.e. provide Cadillac device for a multinational mining company and El Cheapo device that can serve the needs of a taxi or mkokoteni driver. Our biggest challenge remains making our product affordable to the mass market and our inspiration is the telcos.
Expansion: right now we are in Ghana and Burkina Faso. We have a toe in the water in Kenya and Angola, potentially Benin by the end of the year. Basically we intend to go continent wide through third party seller agreements.
Will send an email.
I just wanted to add a link to another piece I had written on call centers about 2 years ago. I guess people are still commenting on the post and I think some of the responses have been quite insightful:
Link below:
http://www.kenyanentrepreneur......ent-104486
call centres mistreat their staff, and some team leaders are just not meant to lead but the positions. Talk of Horizon (the new call centre)they have very poor communication channels, the chut there thinks he owns the world and looks down on africans and tends to think that african s are illitrate. they fire people at will and they dont want admit they got a lousy account.
I know a local entrepreneur with a net worth of over KSh 1bn despite having no government or corporate customers. He won’t hire graduates for low-paying rank-and-file positions. Just because we have massive unemployment doesn’t mean you go employing a graduate as a teller, call centre agent, secretary, watchman, waitress, or nursery school teacher. Doing so is asking for trouble. Just look at the most popular thread on this blog. You don’t force a Std 8 kid to repeat Std 3!
Low-paying jobs should only be given to non-graduates from humble rural areas, or to top university students on holiday.