Ryla, which provides business process outsourcing services, will provide support for the upcoming 2010 Census, which will kick off on Census Day, April 1. Ryla will serve as a subcontractor to IBM partner TeleTech for the 2010 Census program. IBM is a subcontractor partner to the Lockheed Martin (News - Alert)-led Decennial Response Integration System program team for the 2010 Census.
The program will require Ryla to hire more than 1,400 contact center agents for temporary positions from April to August 2010. The temporary agent positions available for the 2010 Census will be based at the firm’s Kennesaw, Ga. location.
Ryla employs more than 2,500 agents in its headquarters at Kennesaw, Ga. and regional headquarters in Saraland, Ala. All applicants must pass a security check that includes fingerprinting, be at least 18 years old, have at least a high school diploma, sign a sworn statement to protect Census data and be legally able to work in the United States. Applicants also must be fluent in English. Fluency in other languages, including Vietnamese, Spanish, Korean, Russian and Mandarin Chinese are also needed.
The Ryla announcement follows on the announcement in January that Lockheed Martin is opening 11 temporary contact centers nationwide, to be operated by IBM (News - Alert) and Vangent, employing a total of some 8,000 agents. The U.S. Census, Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors cut the ribbons on the largest of these centers, in Sandy Utah, which is in the Salt Lake City area.
This contact center and others will handle inbound and outbound calling activities to support the 2010 Census data capture efforts. The contact centers will also conduct outbound calls to follow up with millions of households to ensure that no one was missed or counted more than once.
Data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau during the 2010 Census will be used to apportion U.S. House of Representatives seats in each state and to distribute more than $400 billion annually in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments for projects such as new roads, bridges, buildings, schools, electronic infrastructure and social services. To ensure that more of them fill out the questionnaires completely the 2010 Census questionnaire will be, says the Census Bureau, one of the shortest in history and consists of 10 questions, taking about 10 minutes to complete.
“Working on the U.S. Census provides Ryla with an excellent opportunity to support a project that significantly impacts large and small communities across the country,” said Mark Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Ryla. “At the same time, the decennial census also allows Ryla to expand our workforce and provide temporary jobs to hundreds of people in the metropolitan Atlanta area.”
“Ryla’s temporary call center agent positions available for the 2010 Census are excellent for millennial workers, veterans and candidates looking to broaden and strengthen their customer service experience,” Wilson added.
Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Erin Harrison