The 
industry in India as well as our key global destinations has seen a  significant shift since its inception, as a primary low-cost destination  for data entry and voice-based roles. 
With close to a million  people in India building rewarding careers with the BPO industry, the  dynamic economic climate is expected to fuel further demand for the  industry to not only deliver cost savings and but to deliver higher  level of performance and results in form of innovation and business  advantage thereby strengthening market positioning of the clients the  BPO organisation are serving. Thus outsourcing as a discipline is  expected to become even more sophisticated.
Over the last many  years, the sector has seen a paradigm shift towards increasingly complex  processes involving rule-based decision making and research and  analytical services requiring informed individual judgement. The clients  expect their service providers to create innovative solutions for their  businesses moving beyond the ‘transactional’ services they provided.
With  an increased focus on value added services as against standard back  office operations in the Indian BPO space, there are immense  opportunities for the new breed of BPO workforce. As the industry is  looking at new markets for outsourcing servicing and exploring areas  where outsourcing never existed before, it requires its workforce to  have a mix of generic and high-end skills with a creative and solution  focused mindset. 
Many organisations today are also discovering  the power of analytics to out-think and out-execute the competition.  These market-leading companies see their ability to exploit analytics as  their distinctive capability—the integrated business processes and  capabilities that together serve customers in ways that are  differentiated from competitors. In order to enable this shift, the  hiring in the BPO industry has evolved from mass hiring to a more demand  specific, job oriented recruitment. 
As the world’s biggest 
BPO  destination accounting for over 34 per cent of total global sourcing,  India is slated to consolidate its position as the market leader for  outsourcing services and would require an army of skilled professionals  with qualifications in array of fields such as medicine, law,  manufacturing, engineering, technology, business administration,  chartered accountancy, pharmacy and actuarial sciences to enable it for  the growth ahead. 
These professionals will need to be skilled in  aspects like foreign language skills, global business process  knowledge, sales and marketing skills, research and business analytics  in order to be successful in the field.
Employees in the BPO  industry are increasingly managing complex pieces of work and are  expected to not only deliver outcomes but also offer continuous  improvement with a keen eye on the client’s profitability and success.  They are also expected to continuously invest in their own skills and  industry knowledge to be able to conceptualise and implement large-scale  changes in their processes.
The new generation of BPO employees  needs to have good communication skills, professional and cultural ethos  to be able to collaborate with similar professionals across the globe,  deep industry knowledge and a desire to learn and invest more towards  building their careers in the industry. Over the next few years, the  industry will continue to build a voracious appetite for professionals  with deep industry skills and service line knowledge. 
As it  expands into new unseen fields, the individuals who have razor sharp  focus, are flexible and agile, have genuine interest in bringing about  change and are able to use their creativity and evolve their own and  team’s capabilities to build, maintain and continuously evolve client  processes enabling client partners achieve market-leading outcomes will  become industry leaders in times to come.