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Assessing Your Progress
I'm not a big fan of New Years resolutions. Sure I've made
dozens of them, all with good intentions and a bit of magical
thinking, believing this time the resolution will stick. Maybe a
few have, but generally these wishful self-promises end...
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Case Study on Career Coaching
Career coaching is a valuable tool to use in all spectrum of career development. Recently one subject found the value of this service so rewarding that he gave his permission to use this study so others could benefit from his experience. The...
Tips To Creating Your Own Cover Letter Template
Using a cover letter template when job hunting is a logical and
time saving measure. Your time is limited, so writing one basic
one and using it as your template will simplify the application
process, making you more efficient and hopefully...
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Two Leadership Strategies: Don’t Lose Your Mind & Be A Coach
Don’t Lose Your Mind Are you feeling overwhelmed, a lack of confidence or under a ton of pressure? Are you trying too hard to make something work and focusing too much on trying to fulfill other people’s needs and expectations? You may have...
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Outsourcing To Podunk: Keeping Jobs Within The Borders
If you have called a company's customer service call center or a
computer manufacturer's tech support department lately, you
probably have had the "joy" of experiencing outsourcing for
yourself. The inefficiency of non-native English speakers as
tech support personnel is astounding; however, corporate
management across the US feel the money saved in salaries by
sending jobs to southeast Asia outweighs the nose-dive in
customer satisfaction ratings. Forrester Research predicts that
by 2015 at least 3.3 million white-collar jobs ($136 billion in
wage earnings) will be outsourced outside the US.
As US consumers demand lower prices for goods and services while
seeking higher and higher salaries, corporate America is caught
in the squeeze and has sought a solution outside the borders of
the US. But what if there is a solution closer to home - say in
Arkansas?
Outsourcing to rural America may be a win-win solution for the
growing problem of rising salaries and demand for lower cost
goods. With the cost of living up to one third lower in rural
areas of the US compared to major metropolitan areas such as San
Francisco or New York, salaries are lower and talent is more
abundant. IT salaries in rural America can be as much as 40%
lower than in large metro areas, offset by a lower costs of
living. It makes sense to send customer service and IT work to
underemployed workers in areas such as North Carolina and New
Mexico.
What types of jobs might be prime targets for rural outsourcing?
Most IT positions from software developers to project managers
can be sent to rural America as can most jobs that have a
home-based element. Customer service centers are being moved out
further from urban areas to take advantage of available labor
and native speakers of English.
Outsourcing within the borders means broader opportunities for
executives and managers who wish to opt out of the urban
lifestyle and settle in smaller towns that provide safer
environments with less stress. Taking a job in a rural area may
mean a 20% pay cut but usually the lower cost of living offsets
the cut, and may actually reduce expenses such as gas and food
costs.
It pays to investigate small town opportunities which, granted
won't have as many opportunities available as the big metro
areas, but the upside is you'll also have a lot less
competition. For example, McKesson Corporation, a large
pharmaceutical distributor, relocated a primary data center from
San Francisco to Iowa and saved an estimated $10 million in
annual salary costs. Besides the salary cost benefit, there are
other benefits
to keeping the work at home including friendly
time zone spans, cultural understanding, common language, and
preserving the tax base. The political and economic benefits
cannot be underestimated, either. Nashville, Tennessee provided
Dell Computer with tax incentives to locate a manufacturing and
customer service location in their area.
Rural Sourcing, Inc. (http://www.ruralsource.com)
of Jonesboro, Arkansas creates white collar jobs by keeping work
that would otherwise be outsourced overseas in towns like
Greenville, North Carolina, and Dubuque, Iowa. RSI provides
project work, call centers, and other commonly-outsourced jobs
to the talented workers who spring from "the sticks" and wish to
stay there.
Jennifer Daly a native of Manchester, Tennessee, a small town of
approximately 20,000 people says, "Nearly all the top 10% of my
high school graduating class have left the area. We all went to
college and got engineering, computer, or education degrees but
couldn't remain at home because there just weren't any jobs
here. It's too bad. This is a great town to raise a family."
Manchester, Tennessee fits the profile of the type of town RSI
targets for new locations - available talent, near large
universities, with a low cost of living and good education
systems. Similar small towns experience a "brain drain" when the
young professional adults with new degrees are not able to
settle "at home" but rather must move away to find jobs. Jack
Allen, an IT executive moved to Austin, Texas to ride the
dot-com bubble but ended up back in his home town of Perry,
Georgia after the bubble burst. He now commutes an hour each way
to his new position in McDonough, Georgia. "I want to raise my
kids in a small town. Life is quieter and safer here." With the
post-9/11 era of urban flight, bringing the white collar jobs to
small town America is a growing trend. Professionals in rural
areas are as well-educated as their urban colleagues and are not
as burdened with high housing costs and other cost of living
items. Bringing the jobs to them that would otherwise be sent to
India, Malaysia, or Pakistan benefits everyone in terms of cost
savings and better customer service.
About the author:
Published in 25 career books, Alesia has been cited by Jist
Publications as one of the "best resume writers in North
America" and quoted as a Career Expert in the Wall Street
Journal. Serving as the Resume Expert for over 50+
organizations, she has numerous media appearances to her credit
and is a frequent keynote speaker. http://getinterviews.com
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