[Alfisti]

Canadian firm looking to expand into the US via the call centre side of our business. We literally have a blank sheet, could set up anywhere.

The following factors are therefore important in terms of city and specific site selection;

- Ideally Central or MTN timezone
- Access to Spanish speakers
- Call centre will be approx. 75 stations
- Primarily evening and weekend work, e.g. 4pm – 10pm weeknights if in mountain time
- Part time employment, ad-hoc projects are the norm so some peak and trough in workload
- As a result we require a large pool of suitable staff to recruit from at short notice
- Likely require a pool of staff at a 2:1 ratio, so 150 staff on the books at all times
- Additional pool of 10 to 15 supervision staff and one full time site manager
- If the site is successful we will look to hire more full time staff across other parts of the business
- Will be hiring in the region of 5 to 10 staff per week to maintain this level of staffing
- No sales, it is all Market Research (this is important)
- Traditionally a suitable role for college students or second family incomes
- Hourly pay rate will likely be just above state minimums
- No $hit-holes
- Owner will not go too close to Mexican border, so no El Paso or whatever
- initial thoughts were Denver (expensive though), Montana, Vegas, Minneapolis, Oklahoma, Kansas

We must do everything we can to avoid severe seasonal peaks associated with dependency on late high school and early university staffing. Q4 each year sees a mass exodus of staff due to school starting, at the same time workload increases significantly leading to large labour shortages.

A primary goal of this new site will be to avoid this situation during Q4, likely through attracting staff that are in late university or adults seeking supplemental family income. This requires detailed analysis of the local labour market and the required pay rate to recruit and retain such staff.

Thoughts, feelings, emotions?