T-Mobile to hire 100 for Oakland call center
By LARRY GRARD, Morning Sentinel
September 24, 2009
OAKLAND — T-Mobile plans to hire about 100 more people to work at its call center here.
Already among the area's largest employers, the company would have about 825 employees at its FirstPark location.
"It's a great place to come to work," General Manager Mark Nolan said last week at the Central Maine Growth Council's annual banquet. Full-time workers start at $11.60 an hour, with benefits.
T-Mobile began operating its call center there in 2005. The company staffs the center from 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week. Employees field customers' questions regarding billing and the function of cell phones.
Nolan said the building is large enough to serve the company's growth plan in Maine.
"We're where we need to be right now," he said.
Steve Levesque of Farmingdale was a driving force in "The People of the Kennebec" group, which landed the funding to build FirstPark, the business and technology center that opened in 2002 to attract high-tech, relatively well-paying jobs to the area.
"This is what we wanted to do," said Levesque, now a director of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, which seeks to redevelop the Brunswick Naval Air Station. "We wanted a high-tech park as a showplace of Maine. And look at this place," he said of T-Mobile's offices. "This is built for the decades. This is a long view."
Leonard Dow, executive director of FirstPark, said T-Mobile is benefiting from a ready and educated work force. "They say they're getting the cream of the crop right now, because so many people are laid off," he said.
John Butera, director of the Central Maine Growth Council, said "opportunity can knock" in a difficult economy.
T-Mobile's impact on the local economy is significant, he said.
"It's huge. It's important from a number of perspectives. It shows, first and foremost, that we can compete for a world-class company."