Christiansburg center is in the midst of hiring and training 200 new employees.
September 14, 2005
CHRISTIANSBURG -- Within five days of being handed a clipboard with neon-green job application paperwork, Caroline Fallin walked into the Christiansburg office of EchoStar Communications Corp. as a new employee.
The former Web designer is one of about 120 people hired by the company Advertisement
in recent months to help fill 200 new full- and part-time positions. The other spots are still up for grabs.
After four weeks of training, Fallin expects to be "out on the floor" in another two-and-a-half weeks.
For her, and many of the new and prospective hires, "out on the floor" means being stationed in one of the hundreds of cubicles that fill EchoStar's 100,000-square-foot space. There, they'll handle some of the 10,000 to 15,000 customer calls that come through the facility each day.
EchoStar is the parent company of DISH Network, a Colorado-based provider of direct broadcast satellite television service.
In the past six years, DISH Network has grown by more than 1 million new customers each year and now serves a total of 11.4 million throughout the country.
That growth and the subsequent need for more technical service and support has spurred executives at the Christiansburg service center to search for hundreds of new employees. Most of them will come in as technical service representatives, paid a starting salary of $9 an hour.
Current efforts mark the second big surge in hiring EchoStar has announced this year.
In January, calls went out for workers to meet customer service needs, including billing and programming.
Almost 200 people were hired as a result, said Training Supervisor John Tutle.
Since January, however, the call center -- one of the company's 10 -- has shifted its focus more toward technical assistance.
While earlier in the year 70 percent of employees handled tech support, that percentage has now grown to 98 percent, said Glenn Mathews, director of customer service operations.
The center currently employs 890 people, Mathews added.
To fill remaining positions, EchoStar is looking to draw people within a 40-mile radius of its Christiansburg location.
In addition to placing ads with local media outlets, the company is looking to work with different branches of the military.
"What we want to do is partner with the military groups so when they have officers and personnel coming out of the armed services we can try and act as a funnel for them and let them know what our job openings are," Mathews said.
And if they're interested, all they have to do is follow Fallin's example and pick up one of the clipboards lying ready in the EchoStar lobby.
EchoStar Communications Corp. is located at 400 Technology Drive in Christiansburg. For more information, visit www.dishnetwork.com.
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