Call center looking to hire 800 will be part of job fair

A Phoenix-based call center rolling into Glendale expects to hire nearly 800 people to fill positions from entrylevel to leadership jobs.

The city will host a job fair next week to assist the firms, Empereon Marketing and Constar Financial Services, and other area companies looking to hire.

Empereon and Constar, which handle communications for Fortune 100 and 500 companies, will open in January at 51st Avenue and Bell Road, in the 51Bells plaza. The hiring team plans to bring in at least 25 people a week through April, CEO Travis Bowley said.

The two firms, both headed by Bowley, operate under the same roof but are managed separately. They provide about 50 clients services including customer relations and retention, technical support, loan servicing and debt collecting.

City officials will assist in the hiring by hosting a job fair and career workshop 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday at the Foothills Recreation and Aquatics Center, 5600 W. Union Hills Drive.

Empereon’s and Constar’s openings are among more than 1,000 in Glendale that companies — including CSAA Insurance Group, Dignity Health, ZyTech Building Systems, Lowe’s and Fry’s Food —

seek to months.

Glendale economic-development administrator Jeanine Jerkovic said she couldn’t remember the last time Glendale had hosted such a large job fair.

“They don’t come about very often, hiring at that size,” she said.

Empereon recruiters will be the busiest of the lot.

“I don’t look at people’s experience,” Bowley said. “I don’t look at whether they have a college degree. What I look at is character and the difference between will and skill.”

After working at call centers for years, in the1990s Bowley set out to start his own when he was 27. He launched his first location in Denver, because he was able to secure an affordable building. He opened a new site about every 21⁄ years after that, expanding to New Mexico, Arizona and Pennsylvania, employing about 1,500 people. Glendale is his fifth spot, a place he chose as much out of sentiment as practicality — he grewupnearwheretheUniversity of Phoenix Stadium stands today.

This site will be his largest and employ about double the number of employees at his Phoenix location. Bowley said Maricopa County’s array of educational facilities equips the area with an educated workforce, and he plans to pull from campuses such as Arizona State University’s West campus.

“I’m a very loyal Glendale guy,” he said.

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