Finnish hordes set sail for Indian shores

In a new twist on the offshoring trend sweeping across Europe, online travel
agency Ebookers is recruiting European workers to work in its call centres on
the Indian sub-continent.

While many Indian workers are fluent in English, group HR director Paul
Kennedy said finding staff who could speak Finnish was not so easy.

The answer was to recruit in Europe and move those staff to India –
providing them with accommodation, food and transport, but paying local wages.

Kennedy said that when Ebookers first advertised in Finland it received 200
responses, and was now also recruiting from France, Spain, Ireland, Sweden and
Norway.

"India is an attractive place to work [for European staff] because they
can travel around on their days off," Kennedy said. "Some staff have
been there for more than 12 months now."

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Ebookers currently has 60 European staff based in India, but plans to
bolster numbers with a new recruitment drive.

UK staff, while not needed to handle calls from English speakers, are being
employed in India to work as coaches and mentors to local employees.