PRC LLC plans to hire another 260 employees by year’s end to expand its 2½-year-old Colorado Springs call center as part of a company wide expansion after emerging from U.S. Bankruptcy Court protection two months ago.

The Florida-based call center operator is boosting its inbound sales staff to handle a seasonal uptick in demand and subscriber growth for a satellite television provider, said Mabel Rodriguez, PRC’s senior vice president of client services. The company operates two-week classroom training programs for about 20 sales representatives at a time and also is looking for additional supervisors and quality assurance personnel to support its expansion plans, she said.

“We’re not concerned we will be able to fill these openings,” Rodriguez said. “This market has done very well to consistently allow us to hire the numbers we need and find enough qualified candidates to meet our hiring demand.”

The company is looking for people with “a dynamic personality” who are high school graduates and have previous sales experience, Rodriguez said. The sales jobs are full time with benefits and include base pay of $10 an hour plus $6-$12 an hour in commissions, or between $33,000 and $45,000 a year. Potential employees can apply at the center, 6805 Corporate Drive, online at www.prccareers.com or by phone at 262-5607.

Demand for satellite television is seasonal, surging during the football season and falling off after the season concludes, Rodriguez said. The jobs are permanent because the company can reduce staff during slow periods by attrition, she said.

PRC’s Springs call center employs about 340. The call center opened in 2007 with 550 employees and the company had planned to add another 400 but added only 50 before filing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2008. The company exited bankruptcy protection after refinancing much of its debt in June 2008 with a $40 million loan from Regions Bank, and has since announced plans to add 350 jobs at call centers it operates in Florida and North Carolina.The company reduced staff at the local center by attrition after the filing by eliminating unprofitable accounts and consolidating some work elsewhere; it recently released 150 temporary workers after an assignment for the digital television transition ended in June, Rodriguez said.

PRC’s expansion comes as Affiliated Computer Services Inc. is trying to hire 135 people to begin a training class and work at its call center at 2424 Garden of the Gods Road. ACS already employs about 300 at the center and the company plans to expand its staff at the center to 600 by year’s end. Job-seekers can apply either at the center or at www.acs-inc.com.

The two companies are expanding with the Colorado Springs unemployment rate near a 20-year high of 8.1 percent with more than 26,000 area residents out of work, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

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