According to the Agency for Promotion of Exports and Investments (Proesa), the call center industry accounts for 60% of GDP, and is one of those responsible for injecting the most dynamism into the economy.
Companies that already operate in the country, El Salvador Sykes, Teleperformance and Stream Global Services, are now joined by U.S. company Express Teleservices, which began operating on Sunday November 20.
The industry currently generates over 12,000 jobs.
"But does the country have the bilingual workforce required by this type of business? According Proesa, the country has been pursuing various initiatives to support the expansion of the number of people who speak English.
With regard to the teaching English, Carlos Giammattei, Transactel marketing coordinator, believes that is an area in which the country is working on through a couple of private initiatives, because it is the same companies who have training academies for achieving the required level of English needed for staff to be hired", reports Elsalvador.com.
Source: elsalvador.com
More on this topic
June 2010
The call center industry is finding it hard to grow, due to lack of qualified bilingual personnel.
From every 7 individuals who apply for a Call Center job, just one has an English Language level of 85% or above. The remaining 6 display a skill level of 70%.
Beatriz Peralta, Sykes general manager, told Elsalvador.com that “these deficiencies limit the growth of the industry.
September 2011
Transactel continues to grow. It is currently looking for a new building outside San Salvador, and has advertised for 250 vacancies to be filled, predicting that at the end the year they will have a total of 2,300 employees.
Guillermo Valiente, director of Transactel El Salvador, said that one potential site for the new headquarters is in the Northern Zone, but "the most important thing is whether the human resources will be there."
January 2012
There are appeals to make teaching English obligatory and to encourage cooperation between private enterprises and the government in order to make the country more attractive to the contact center industry, and generate more jobs.
The Government and the private sector aim to create a common initiative to attract more call centers companies, and create 50,000 new jobs for young people, mainly in the next few years ahead, said Elperiodico.com. Call centers already employ some 15,000 young people.
September 2009
On Friday, Transactel will inaugurate its fifth call center facility in the country.
Located in Quetzaltenango, it will hire an initial 150 workers, expecting to increase its payroll to 550 in the medium term. It will provide customer support from three U.S. companies.
From Sigloxxi.com: "'We could create one thousand additional jobs, if more people spoke English', said Guillermo Montano, Transactel manager".
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