1,400 jobs to Kennesaw By Dan Chapman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Ryla, one of Georgia’s biggest call-center operations, announced Monday the hiring of 1,400 seasonal and full-time employees in Kennesaw. Average salary: $10 an hour.
About 1,000 of the jobs will last only three months. Supervisors will be hired for 100 or so positions, said company spokeswoman Karen Clay.
With an unemployment rate of 10 percent in Georgia, call-center jobs – once regarded as low-pay, high-pressure telemarketers – have grown in volume, popularity and sophistication since the recession started nearly three years ago.
Ryla, for example, announced 1,500 U.S. Census Bureau jobs last February. Three thousand people applied for those jobs, Clay said.
“We saw many more experienced people from numerous industries -- that was atypical,” Clay said. “The service industry, in general, has been and continues to be targeted as a high-growth area, not just here in Atlanta but across the country.”
The 1,400 hires won’t make cold calls, the company says.
Most of the new employees will help a repeat client (Clay wouldn’t divulge the company) enroll its employees in a health-care plan. The remaining 400 hires will do federal government work for a third-party contractor.
Ryla’s growth the past few years has brightened Georgia’s job picture, particularly for better-educated workers laid off from white-collar jobs.
“The normal contact center agent profile has a high school diploma plus some college,” said David Butler, executive director for the nonprofit National Association of Call Centers. “But there’s people coming out of college now, and those who’ve been laid off with college degrees, who would not historically look for these jobs. So there’s a higher caliber of applicant.”
Ryla, started in 2001, provides customer service, tech support, data collection, surveys and other back-office work for Fortune 500 companies, state governments and the federal government. It was bought out earlier this year by Alorica Inc., a California company with 20,000 employees.
In all, Butler said, roughly 5 million people work in the domestic call-center industry, with hiring picking up in 2010.
“Most contact centers, over 90 percent, actually hire full-time people,” he said. “It’s definitely not a seasonal industry. That’s a stereotype that’s mostly incorrect. But obviously there are exceptions to that.”
“The real question,” Butler added, “is can [Ryla] keep those people once the job market improves?”
Interviewing for the positions has begun, and the new workers will start as early as Nov. 2.
Apply online for the jobs at: www.ryla.com."
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