New company to offer work-at-home jobs in Abilene
July 22, 2009
A national company has chosen Abilene as a training site for work-at-home phone representatives, and about 120 customer-service jobs will be created locally, an Abilene economic development official said Monday.
Paid training opportunities will probably start in September, with the jobs offering “an opportunity to earn a decent living,” said Gary Robinett, director of marketing and industrial recruitment for the Abilene Industrial Foundation.
"There’s lots of work-at-home jobs out there, a lot of them aren’t real,” said Robinett. “These are going to be very real.”
The company’s name and details will be announced in a press conference today.
But Robinett said, however, that “most people are very familiar with it.” No Development Corporation of Abilene job-creation incentive funds are being paid to the company, he added.
Today’s press conference will be at Texas State Technical College. A college computer lab will be used for the employee training, said Braid Blanks, director of marketing and communications for the college.
The jobs won’t involve making phone calls, but employees will answer the phone and be required to have a non-wireless Internet connection, said Robert Puls, business development consultant with Workforce Solutions of West Central Texas. The center is working with the company to screen candidates.
“This is not minimum wage jobs ... it’s well above the minimum wage,” said Puls. The company also offers promotion opportunities for stay-at-home workers, he said. Employees will also be offered a benefits package, according to Robinett.
It’s unclear how many people in Abilene work at home, but such jobs are likely to be quite popular, said Mary Ross, executive director of Workforce Solutions of West Central Texas.
She recalled when medical transcription company Transcend announced work-at-home positions in 2005.
“They were expecting to get maybe 50 or 100 people who might be interested. I think we had 500 people that showed up,” said Ross. “Everybody was so excited about the possibility of working from home.”
Now, “I would suspect that same thing, or perhaps worse, could happen, because the economy was much better then,” said Ross.
Transcend ultimately pulled it’s training center from Abilene in 2007, though at one time a company official said it had 100 Abilene employees. Company executives did not immediately respond to questions about the current number of Abilene employees.
Puls said the new company doesn’t require employees to know any medical terminology.
“They’re looking for qualified people that have good computer skills ... and the ability to communicate on the telephone,” said Puls. Robinett said employee training will last between four to six weeks, and that positions will be filled over the next year.
While Transcend was opening its first training center when it arrived in Abilene, Robinett said the new company has experience setting up training centers with educational partners in other areas.
“They have other operations in their work-at-home section or division. They have brick-and-mortar call centers as well,” said Robinett. “They’re finding, as they expand more, there are a lot of qualified labor folks out there that can work at home and be just as effective.”
He said the Abilene Industrial Foundation was first contacted by a consultant, then submitted a proposal to the company. Executives visited in March, he said.
“I think the driving factor in their decision is based on the quality of labor that we have in Abilene,” said Robinett. “Even in their visit to Abilene, that was the focus of the visit, was determining if Abilene had a quality labor pool.”
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