Call centre jobs come calling for unemployed

A Glasgow contact centre is taking part in the Working Links scheme to provide call centre jobs for the unemployed.

Teleperformance has teamed up with employment and skills experts Working Links to recruit at its Glasgow base. Working Links, which delivers the UK government’s Work Programme initiative to help unemployed people get back to work, trained its customers and equipped them with the knowledge so they’d be able to hit the ground running at Teleperformance.

The one-day training ‘routeway’ gave potential candidates an opportunity to gain an understanding of what is expected in a call centre environment, as well as interview and competency training, and has provided new leases of life for more than 50 previously unemployed people.

Mary Anne Reid, employer services consultant at Working Links, said: “We were able to offer a cost-effective solution that was completely tailored to Teleperformance’s needs. We not only screened candidates for suitability but put in place pre-employment training to ensure that our customers were as fully prepared as possible and knew what to expect in such an environment.”

Employers can currently get £2,275 for every unemployed 18-24-year-old they take on from Working Links via the government’s Youth Contract initiative. To find out more, visit www.workinglinks.co.uk