Atlanta-based CompuCredit, which operates a 150-employee Salt Lake City call center in Salt Lake City, said it expects to hire at least 100 additional employees over the next year. Workers at that location earn an average of $43,000 a year, including bonuses, handling collections efforts for CompuCredit's credit card business.
Employment could climb further after the company completes an acquisition of a Utah-based industrial bank that employs about 115 people, said Rick Gilbert, vice chairman of CompuCredit.
Financial services giant Fidelity Investments said it is hiring more than 100 new customer-service representatives to staff its Salt Lake City call center.
The new hires will bring Fidelity's Utah employment levels to about 1,350 by early 2006, said Tai Bright, general manager of the retail brokerage operations in Salt Lake City.
Fidelity employees in Salt Lake City provide customer service and trading support services for individual investors. The company would not divulge what its call center employees, who handle inbound calls, earn.
But Mark Knold, senior economist for the Utah Department of Workforce Services, said he would not be surprised if they earn in the range of $30,000 annually.
He said many telemarketing workers in Utah earn $14,000 to $22,000, but the more skilled call center positions in the state can pay $30,000 to 40,000 or more.
Knold said call center operators are attracted to Utah's labor pool, which is the youngest in the country.
Knold estimates that 47 percent of Utah's labor force is 15 to 35 years of age.
"No other state has such a high share of young people in its labor force," he said.
Not only does the state have a lot of young workers, many of whom are interested in call center work, but "a lot of them want to stay here in Utah," Knold said. That makes Utah even more attractive to call center operators, which try to avoid high turnover.
Although CompuCredit and Fidelity offer primarily full-time opportunities, many other call centers offer part-time and flexible hours. Many of those positions are marketed to students who attend one of northern Utah's many schools, colleges and universities or people who want a second job or part-time job to help pay family bills.
Knold said call center jobs in all salary ranges are being added in Utah, which boasts job growth of about 3.5 percent - among the highest in the country.
Competition for call center workers has intensified in recent years as the number of call centers in the state has grown. But Utah's population has grown, too, and the demand for call center jobs among Utahns remains strong, Knold said.
Perhaps that is why a number of call center operators are confident they can fill hundreds - even thousands - of positions in the coming years.
Teleperformance USA, for example, believes it will be able to hire as many as 1,000 people to work at a new call center in Lindon in Utah County.
Pay at the center is about average for the industry - $9 an hour, not including bonuses. Workers handle inbound calls for one of Teleperformance's clients that it will not divulge. The company already employs about 2,600 people in Utah and says that it has had success recruiting the quantity and quality of employees it needs.
CompuCredit said it, too, has had success recruiting the type of workers it needs. In fact, the company said it likes Utah so much it would like to create a western regional operations center in Salt Lake City, which would create even more jobs in the coming years.
Gilbert of CompuCredit said its Salt Lake City call center is the company's most productive measured by how well it collects on delinquent accounts.
"We like what we have seen in Utah," he said. "I see a solid work ethic - people show up for work and they work diligently."
Utah call center operators
CompuCredit, Atlanta
www.compucredit.com
Credit card collections
Fidelity Investments, Boston
www.fidelity.com
Individual investor inquiries
Teleperformance
www.teleperformance.com
Variety of work
Convergys, Cincinnati
www.convergys.com
Variety of work
