Come springtime, a few hundred Barrie-area people looking for work could be celebrating.
It will be a few weeks yet before job seekers at the Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS) job fair at the Southshore Centre find out if they’ve found employment.
The company is considering setting up a call centre in Barrie for incoming customer service calls for telecommunications, financial and tech support firms. It is not a telemarketing company.
HGS Canada has opened three sites in Ontario in the past two years: Thunder Bay in 2010, North Bay in early 2011 and Belleville in the summer of 2012. If it decides to locate another facility in Barrie, it will be the sixth in the province and the 10th in Canada.
Kathy Follett-Lloyd, of HGS, said more than 2,000 applications were received online and more than 1,000 job seekers attended the job fair on Friday and Saturday.
Deciding whether or not HGS locates to Barrie will take some time, she added.
“The decision making-process will take us at least 30 to 60 days as we analyze the resumes and investigate possible locations for a centre,” she said Monday.
Hany Kirolos, the city’s director of economic development, said interest in the job fair was outstanding.
“Advance applications broke all previous records for similar exercises in other cities by HGS. The two-day in person job fair showing was also very strong,” he said.
“As an inbound call centre, it is part of the data warehousing value chain emerging as a huge cluster for the City of Barrie,” he said. “We will continue to work with HGS through their process and assist wherever we can to ensure we win this business.”
If that win comes to pass, it can only mean good things for Barrie, Kirolos said.
“Five hundred jobs from a single company, an in-bound call centre that’s going to train, a good brand name recognized for its excellence and promoting from within, all speak to why it’s so important — in any job market — to get this business,” he said. “It reinforces Barrie as a great place to do business for those considering to establish (or relocate) a new business
like HGS and its magnitude of investment.”
Kirolos said getting all the players involved in trying to secure HGS highlights the advantages of working to together.
“From the mayor and council, our MP and MPP, regional economic development departments and employment agencies: all got the word out, and it paid off,” he said.
The job application portal at www.joinhgs.com will remain open for several weeks to come to give all those who could not attend the job fair an opportunity to apply.
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