High-tech public service

Teleservices is a rapidly expanding area of employment. From no call centres in 1992, there are now more than 70 call centres employing more than 7,000 people, according to an IDA spokesman. The number of employees will increase to some 10,000 next year if IDA predictions hold true.

The job centres around the use of a phone and a personal computer and could involve making car or hotel or airline reservations, helping customers with product information, selling goods and services or diagnosing faults in computers or software.

About 30 per cent of the employees in call centres are non-Irish nationals employed for their language proficiency. Teleservices spans a range of products and services with the reservation type companies, such as American Airlines and Hertz, having a requirement for languages. Some of the PC call centres such as Gateway and IBM are also multilingual but others such as Dell conduct business in English.

The higher end of the market, for instance Oracle's call centre, might require a computer science degree with a language while the reservation companies are usually looking for PLC graduates rather than third-level graduates.

The IDA spokesman says there is a proven career path, with teleservices people moving on to become supervisors, line managers, team leaders and divisional managers. "There is a lot of talk about e-commerce taking over from call centres but we feel they will broaden out to encompass e-commerce and shared services. The best model is probably Dell in Bray which does both e-commerce and teleservices, using both the phone and the Internet as a means of communication," he says.

Courses which include languages, business or information technology are all good starters if you are interested in a job in teleservices. There is a course, at Post-Leaving Certificate level, which has been specifically designed with this career in mind. A two-year course, it includes a substantial grant-aided work placement abroad.

Marie Therese Bouiffe, co-ordinator of the international languages and information technology course at Whitehall Senior College, Dublin, says people don't seem to have a grasp of what this area entails and are not aware of the employment opportunities. "There is a myth among students that teleservices is a boring dead-end job . . . the course itself offers a good variety of skills, including an intensive training in a European language," she says.

Whitehall offers French and German. Students spend a minimum of nine hours each week on their language studies. In addition, they study IT, communications, customer care and support and business management. The college positions the 17-week work placement so students can extend their stay over the summer months between first and second year. "Some students who graduated this year spent five-and-a-half months in France and Germany, It gives them an edge," says Bouiffe. Some of the first batch of students to graduate last summer returned to France and Germany. Others are working in reservations and in technical support in Ireland.

Carlow Vocational School, which also offers applied languages and IT with French or German, is still accepting applications for the first year of the course. Students need a minimum of a C3 at ordinary level in the relevant European language.

School principal Bernard Mulchrone says the first of group of students qualified last June and they have been very successful in terms of finding employment. "Many were offered jobs even before they finished the course, which is very intensive," he says. Successful graduates get an NCVA level 3 award.