Some call centers who employ home-based agents are continuing to hire workers in spite of the recession. Here’s the story.

Background: The Expanding “Homeshoring” Movement
A few years ago, call center jobs were routinely outsourced to India, the Philippines, and other offshore destinations as part of the enormous offshore flow of “business process outsourcing.” However, cultural differences and other factors made many U.S. customers unhappy, and companies began to rethink their strategy.

Meanwhile, the Internet, along with falling communications costs and other developments, made it possible to have U.S. agents work from home. On the “labor” side, people were willing to earn a bit less and even do without benefits for the ability to work at home. Thus, the “homeshoring” movement was born. It has proven to be such an effective solution that some “customer contact centers” continue to recruit home-based workers even during the recession.       

Who’s Hiring?
Several customer-contact companies announced openings in recent months, while many others continue to advertise positions on their websites. These include:

Arise Virtual Solutions: Arise recently announced that it seeks home-based agents who own Mac computers. Like several other call centers, Arise engages agents as independent contractors rather than as employees. (For details on the differences between working for a call center as an employee and as an independent contractor, see our blog post here.) For more on the Arise openings, go to its home page.

LiveOps: LiveOps continues to advertise for agents in various roles, including answering calls from infomercials and handling calls for carry-out dining (e.g., pizza and other vendors). LiveOps also advertises for bilingual Spanish-English and French-English agents. Like Arise, LiveOps engages agents as independent contractors rather than employees. For more, click here.

VIPdesk: VIPdesk has been actively recruiting customer-contact agents, which it calls “brand ambassadors.” Like Arise and LiveOps, VIPdesk engages agents as independent contractors as well. To familiarize applicants with the brand ambassador role, VIPdesk hosts “Virtual Open Houses” at its site. For more, click here.

A number of other companies, such as Alpine Access, Convergys, and N.E.W. Corp., continue to advertise for home-based agents as well. For details on these and 80 additional employers of home-based agents, see our list here.

To find or start discussions about home-based customer service agent positions, visit Military.com’s forums, or visit the Careers channel.