Traveling Onsite: Reasons

Being in outsourcing industry you get to travel a lot. People find it valuable to quote such travel experiences in their professional resume. There is a great 'demand' for skilled resources having international exposure- at least in India. Prospective employees with 'onsite experience' are valued more as compared to equally qualified people with no onsite exposure. This trend is more prominent in India.

I got several chances to travel various locations of US and Europe for serving client organizations. The most common reason for such travel is to gather knowledge, get training from onsite resources and then come back to your offshore location and carry out the work (and extend the training to other offshore resources). When I visited abroad for the first time, this was the very reason for my travel. However, over a period of time, I have seen more pervasive reasons for such onsite travels. These reasons are rarely known to most of the people and lesser understood by the recruiting agencies.

The reasons are (in their order of value addition):

1. Winning new accounts by showcasing skills to (still a prospective) client.
2. Establishing the building blocks of a long term outsourcing relationship.
3. Providing consultancy to clients
4. Knowledge gathering for new project (to be executed at offshore)
5. Visits under staff exchange program as a strategic step for long term relationships (between vendor and client).


Watch this space for interesting findings about the nature of onsite visit, and the recruitment perspective attached with them...