S&P Data Says It Will Create 450 Jobs at its New Saint John Location
SAINT JOHN – S&P Data is well its way to hiring 450 people at its new Saint John contact centre, the company said in an announcement on Wednesday.
S&P Data provides customer care services in several industries, including energy, Fintech, financial services, and telecom and cable. The company’s head office is in San Diego, with other contact centres in Ohio, New Mexico, Michigan, Toronto, Hamilton and Trenton, Ontario. In total, the company has between 2,500 – 3,000 employees.
The company says it expects to hire 450 people at its new Saint John location at Loch Lomond Place over the next five years. The S&P office is located in the space formerly occupied by the Sears contact centre that closed last year.
Brian Cato, president of Support Services, said the company has already hired more than 160 employees in Saint John.
“The key is to get the word out there to more and more people within the community,” said Cato, who oversees S&P’s Canadian operations. “We will not be able to grow unless we provide a great experience for our current employees. Because we’ve done that, we’ve seen the numbers come in.
“If I think about our current training groups, we’re getting eight to 10 referrals per group from our current employees. so we’re excited. We’re excited about where we are and where we’re going and we’re looking to get there even faster than we originally planned.”
RELATED: U.S. Company Opening Contact Centre in Saint John That Will Employ 300 People
Cato says they are expecting to double their current Saint John staff over the next 60 to 90 days. One of the ways they plan on doing this is through a job fair being held April 4 at the Saint John office.
“We hope we get a great turnout and we’re going to keep pressing for the numbers,” he says.
Employees get a base-rate pay of $13 an hour, with the ability to make anywhere from $2 to $10 more based on performance with commissions.
In an interview with Huddle back in January, Cato said the Saint John centre will provide customer care services for a Canadian telecommunications company that is expanding its contract with S&P. Cato said a privacy agreement prevents them from revealing the name of that client.
Opportunities New Brunswick says S&P Data is eligible for an investment of up to $3.45 million from the province. Upwards of $3-million will come in the form of payroll rebates, which the government says are performance-based and only disbursed to a company once it has created and maintained the jobs for at least one year and provided proof of salary levels and employment.
There will also be a $450,000 non-repayable contribution, which will be used to help the company with its hiring targets and lease agreement at Loch Lomond Place.
Premier Brian Gallant said the new jobs were a positive development for the city and the contact centre industry. Much was made over the closure of the Sears centre, but Gallant said there are more success stories than failed ones. He also noted the “silver linings” in the aftermath of Sears closing.
“We don’t want to see things like Sears happen, but there are silver linings. Because of the mechanism we put in place, no money was disbursed to them,” he said to reporters after the announcement.
“Also, Sears had come in, they recruited people, they spent the time training [them] and when it didn’t work out, other businesses [benefited]. Air Canada and S&P Canada saw that there was a good workforce here that had been recruited and trained by Sears, [which] I think was one of the reasons why they were encouraged to invest and create jobs here.”
The province estimates that the 450 new jobs contribute $88.1-million in direct GDP for the province over five years and $9.25-million in direct tax revenue.