So, it’s easy to be a call center employee? Any half-baked moron with a clipped accent, first grade typing skills and zero ambition could become one—at least, that’s what I was told. Often, I thought so too but was not sure. I decided to find out by stepping over to the other side of the fence—just for sometime—from the hack to the call center employee wannabe. That took me to the offices of MeritTrac—a Bangalore-based company that tests and screens call center consultants.

The first thing I saw on entering the lobby of their office was a pin-drop-silent crowd of about 10 people in their mid and late 20s. As many journalists in the room and it would have sounded like a fish market, I thought wryly.

After some time, the heavy stillness and the inertia of the situation got to me. I got up and behaved like a true scribe—passed my visiting card to a peon and requested a meeting with Mohan Kannegal, the director for technology and content at MeritTrac, and a co-founder. Thirty year old Kannegal is a graduate from the SP Jain Institute of Management. After mutual exchange of pleasantries and shoptalk, I got to the point.

"Look, I have an unusual request. I would like to take the test you offer to prospective call center employees. Is that okay by you?" I asked. "Sure! Just give me a couple of minutes to set things up." With that he left.

Old Horrors
I was taken to the test floor—a brightly-lit room with a dozen PCs attached to headsets and mouthpieces —a miniature call center floor. The gang in the lobby had, by then, graduated from the lobby to the test floor. But silence still prevailed. Mohan then gave a quick run-up of the six tests I had to clear to become an ideal call center employee.

The first three tests would come without a break—verbal ability, numerical ability and ITeS mental ability. I had always prided myself on my sang froid–the unusual ability to maintain coolness in trying circumstances. Bit of a stiff-upper-lip Brit I thought I was. But the mention of my schooldays’ nemesis—‘numerical ability’ or maths as I used to know it—left me with sweaty palms and a fear of the unknown. I loudly questioned the need for mathematical ability for chaps who would spend the next year or so talking into phones and typing e-mails for client’s seven seas away.

But Mohan dismissed it. "You know, people handling BPO, especially financial BPO would need some of knowledge of maths. Anyhow, don’t worry—its just class 10th level stuff like percentages, fractions etc," he quipped. That was precisely my problem. Class 10th was the last time I had done mathematics and that was a good decade ago. With that Mohan left me at the mercy of my guide—Shalini, petite 20 something woman with a clipped "hello" and a very effusive smile- she seemed the very epitome of customer care and patience.

Bogie Man
It began. Verbal ability was a breeze. Finding synonyms and reading comprehension was child’s play for any man who could quote passages of Julius Caesar like a nursery rhyme. Humility or patience was never one of my virtues and I finished the test five minutes ahead of the stipulated twenty minutes and moved on to the next section. And that is when the trouble started. After a couple of questions about profit and loss and about the same old ‘A’ and ‘B’ running a mile in different directions only to land up in the same place - bogie man surfaced. A question about ratios followed by one on compound interest took the wind out of my sails. And as I was busy cracking what was the compounded interest for a man who had borrowed a hefty sum at 12% interest or so, the rest of my batchmates in the test floor started babbling in unison. I was startled out of my wits. And then amused to hear the civil engineer sitting next to me talk about his school days into the mouthpiece. The mathematics ‘honors’ graduate preferred to speak about ‘her favorite sportsperson.’ (They hadn’t gone mad. They’d just begun their Speaking Ability Test).

And then I became angry. Somewhere during my brief stint at eavesdropping, I had forgotten about the man and his compounded interest. Five minutes of intensive number crunching effort was lost. And then the screen turned yellow – warning me that only about two minutes were left for this section. I still had to crack about 12 questions and the options were to either take wild guesses or do what I could honestly. The fear of negative marking for wrong answers won and I chose the latter. As the time ran out, I left eight questions unanswered.

Anger Management
The last frontier in round 1 was something called – ITeS mental ability. It’s a polite way of describing what in psychometric terms is called clerical ability. That is, the ability to do the same thing again and again. That is something, I believe, that call center employees needed aplenty. After all, these guys had to spend a good chunk of their working days following the same script, making the same calls and sending pre-scripted emails. It is believed that geniuses and very creative people do not fare well in this area.

To say that I performed poorly in this area is an understatement. By that, I do not stake my claim to genius or stupendous creativity but rather put it on the questions asked in the test. Imagine trying to answer a dozen questions asking you to find the odd one out among a set of numbers like – ‘1190876549875645’, ‘1190876549875445’, ‘1190876549875645’, ‘1190876549875645’. Or for that matter, trying to identify the third number to the left of the center of this set of numbers – ‘6858756758754568757685765864’. And these were the tamer questions among the lot. The result was simple – I was bristling with resentment by the time I was through with question number 10. A couple of deep breaths later and counting backwards from 10 to 1 – I was still quaking with righteous fury. I was not sure who the fury was directed at. Myself – for not being able to do this, or at the absurdity of the entire exercise.

And then the time ran out. It was time for the second round.

Hello, Hello!
My guide, Shalini explained that this was a round designed to check out my keyboard skills, communication skills and listening comprehension. In other words, would I sound good on the phone? Would I say the "peoples of America" instead of "people of America"? Would every word that I speak be followed by an "ummm" or an "aaaah"? Would I listen carefully to a customer or would I be thinking of my next coffee break? Would I type at a snail’s pace or would I be called nimble fingers?

Well, I got the answer sooner than expected. If I were to work at any call center, I would be nicknamed Mr Wooden Fingers. I had about five minutes to look at the prescription of a woman with breast cancer and enter her case history and prescribed medication as quickly and accurately (including upper and lower case) as possible, into a database with about 20 fields. I managed to fill up about 10 fields. Also, I got fresh insights into the meaning of the expression – "doctor’s handwriting".

Okay. So big deal. Maybe I wasn’t a great typist. Maybe my voice sounded better. Communication Skills was up next. After strapping on a gigantic headset, I was given about two minutes to prepare for my allotted topic – "My college days." Those days are ancient history and it was a struggle to remember what had happened when I was a couple of pounds lighter and much happier. So when the timer started, I spoke unconvincingly about beer, Marina beach and the paucity of pretty women in our college. That was for the first three and a half minutes. And then I ran out of steam. I couldn’t think of a single damn thing to say! Struck me much later that I hadn’t said a word about what I had gone to college for – my education.

Anyway, I improvised. "Blah, Blah, Blah…..Blah" Those were the insightful words of wisdom that I spoke for about 10 seconds before throwing in the towel and the headset.

It was now time for the last one – listening ability. This should be easy, I thought. It’s the first thing they taught us in Journalism school – be a good listener. And I prided myself on being one. Even when what I had to listen to was a boring dialogue between two people about "claud seedin’ as a means to stap faurest faiers in Flauriduh." For the perplexed, that is the North American way of saying "cloud seeding as a means to stop forest fires in Florida". But I had no problems. Abundant exposure to visiting CEOs from the land of the free and Larry King Live helped my cause.

Not Too Bad
Shalini listened to my bacchanalian college days’ confessions with a smile. And ranked me not too badly on grammar and fluency. I thought she was being kind. My Palakkad Iyer accent also passed. As Shalini put it, " You don’t use too many umms and aahs and also do not say peoples instead of people." My mathematical ability, despite my reservations, was okay for a call center job. I felt smug as she rated me high on listening ability. But the one big worry area - clerical ability needed an overhaul. I had passed but with scores somewhere so low in the tub that it was unlikely call centers would be jumping up and down to hire me.

So much for the skills. The next step was to get a psychometric profile done which would reveal whether I was psychologically the right man for the job. For example, how would I react if an irate customer would start yelling his top off? Would I take let him have a dose of his/ her own medicine or would I smile and say "Please call again. It’s been a pleasure knowing you." Not that I needed a test to know what I would do but nevertheless I decided to go all the way.

So, I made it to the office of Team Value Profiling Services (TVPS) that offers an internationally acclaimed psychometric profiling service called Thomas Profiling. The test was rather simple. All I had to do was to choose from several sets of words - the words I most identified with and the ones I least identified with. And the choice had to be made in less than five seconds. For example, a set of words could be - aggressive, understanding, negotiable and adamant. There were about 40 such sets to choose from. In all, it took me about five minutes to finish the test. Even as I took the test, I wondered whether somebody with an excellent vocabulary and a sharp mind or who has taken the test before may be able to beat the test. Maybe I was wrong!

Summum Bonum
My responses were fed into a system and voila! the results were out in a minute - a 10 page report. The first part of the report, something called a personal profile analysis, delved into my self-image, behavioral patterns at work and behavior under pressure among other things. The report was, much to my pleasure, sprinkled with adjectives like "self-starter", "competitive but forceful" and "versatile and positive", "eager and active." But the report was not just a paean written to extol my virtues. "There may be a tendency to try and override others on occasions," ...likely to be somewhat self-critical", "may not follow through as one may wish".

The report even had a description about my ideal boss. "Should Mr Mahalingam have a boss.. "advocated the report" .. then "ideally that person will be direct but democratic in approach and have the ability to communicate facts and information in a logical manner." But the most interesting part was yet to come. It was about my purported behavior under pressure. I was most likely to emphasize my "natural forceful and assertive manner" and turn "very aggressive."

The second part of the report - a call center audit - examined whether I would fit into a call center job. The summary of the report was that despite a "persuasive, outgoing and sociable style", my "preferred high activity rate, relative intolerance and impatience" did not make me an ideal call center employee. "In addition, his highly competitive nature and driving style would not be consistent with the attributes considered necessary for inbound call center agents," said the report.

The bottom-line - I was most likely to ask an irate customer to jump off from the nearest open window rather than try to pacify him. So, there I was at the end of the experiment. My hypothesis was repudiated. It definitely takes more than just a clipped accent and top-notch typing skills to become a good call center employee. Among other things, it requires unending patience and the ability to do the same thing again and again – what the tests called "clerical ability." I didn’t have it in me. Not that I am cribbing, but the fact remains - I ain’t no call center employee.

T V MAHALINGAM in Bangalore