Indian Companies Are Adding Western Flavor
Arun Kumar had never shaken hands with a foreigner nor needed to wear a necktie. He vaguely thought that raising a toast had something to do with eating bread. But Mr. Kumar, 27, and six other engineers were recently recruited by the Hyderabad offices of Sierra Atlantic a software company based in Fremont, Calif. And before they came face-to-face with American customers, the new employees went through a challenging four-week training session aimed at providing them with global-employee skills like learning how to speak on a conference call and how to address colleagues.
As more and more service jobs migrate to India, such training programs are increasingly common Sierra Atlantic say that one-fourth of its 400 employees working out of the Hyderabad offices are constantly interacting with foreigners.