A Perfect Day Job While You Grow Your Home Business
A Home Business Article Contributed by Sharon Hill
Keeping Your "Day Job" While You Grow Your Home Business
Most home businesses start part time - it's a fact. While folks struggle to create a lucrative home business, they find they have to work for someone else to keep a roof over their heads, and even to pay for the equipment and supplies for their new home business.
A Great Job While You Pursue Your Home Business Dream
While I created my home business I worked in call centers. After working in the newspaper advertising industry for years, putting in seventy and eighty hour weeks, I realized I would never be able to accomplish my writing and editing home business if I didn't leave newspapers. But I had to eat. What to do?
I got a job at a call center.
Those of you who haven't worked for one or heard much about them may think that all call centers are about outbound telemarketing. They are not. Yes, those exist, but more and more large firms - companies you wouldn't think of - are contracting with outsourcers. These outsourcing firms have call centers in various locations - in South Africa, Ireland, India - and many throughout the U.S. Major telecommunications firms hire outsourcers - Verizon and MCI for instance.
Companies such as Office Depot, AAA and 1-800-FLOWERS have outsourcing firms taking some, or even all, of their calls. If, for instance, you have a problem with your phone bill you may call your carrier, and be talking to someone who is employed by the outsourcing company that is hired by your carrier to represent you. It happens much more than you think.
Why? Because these companies may have "peak" periods - times of the day or month - when the volume of calls is excessively high, but only for a brief period. Rather than asking employees to once in a while work extra, they hire outsourcers to take over some of the calls during peak periods.
Another reason may be financial. The firm may be in an area whose cost of living is so high that it necessitates a higher wage to attract and retain employees. The firm may save a considerable amount of money by contracting with an outsourcing firm whose office location or locations is in comparably low wage areas.
The other subcontracting attraction for these firms is the frustration of staffing a call center - an industry whose traditional annual turnover is 60 percent. It's very attractive to hand this staffing frustration over to others.
So, How Does This Help Your Home Based Business?
A call center job is a great way to earn a decent living while keeping your weekday hours free to grow your home business. Call centers do not require a degreed candidate - just someone who learns easily, follows instruction, is articulate and customer-service oriented. Anyone who has the drive and the skills for a home business, has the skills for a call center job.
Call centers are always hiring! Often they are open 24 hours, but if not they are certainly open weekends, many until 2 or 3am. And, evening and weekend shifts are the least popular. I've twice walked into a call center recruiter's office and applied for a position, stating that I need to work 2nd shift and weekends and gotten exactly the hours I asked for. My last call center position was Thursday through Sunday 3:45pm until 12:15am. It was perfect. All day Monday through Wednesday I wrote and grew my home business. I also did that Thursday and Friday until 2pm. It was perfect.
Call centers usually pay reasonable well, have great benefits and an extremely easy dress code. You can offer work in jeans, at least on the weekends.
Some call centers to check out include Nationwide Credit Inc. (not just collections), Dial America Marketing and Sitel Corporation. Working for a call center - a great way to go when you're not yet ready to quit your job but want to have weekday time free to grow your own business.
