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Call Center in Amherst to Boost Jobs

White Directory site expects to employ 150 by end of this year

By Dino Grandoni

July 21,  2010
 

Amherst’s status as a call center hub got a boost Tuesday when the White Directory Publishers announced plans for a telephone sales center that will employ 150 by the end of the year.

The company — which publishes LocalEdge, formerly known as the Talking Phone Book — said it will continue hiring for telephone sales positions at its Amherst-based office.

These new “online media consultants” will sell online and mobile-phone advertising across the country for a company trying to rebrand itself in an increasingly digital marketplace.

“It’s actually very exciting stuff,” said Greg S. Garrick, vice president of marketing.

Erie County Executive Chris Collins spoke at a news conference along with company’s top brass, trumpeting the expansion of employment in the area.

“It’s all about jobs. I’m thrilled to be here today,” Collins said, expressing his views about how government can help in job creation.

“It’s not the government’s job to create jobs. It’s the government’s job to create an environment for jobs,” Collins said.

The Republican has longtime ties to the Talking Phone Book. He tapped former company executive Mark Davis as his first deputy county executive; named another executive, Philip M. Corwin, to the county Industrial Development Agency; and backed former President Rick Lewis’ unsuccessful bid for Congress in 2008.

“We enjoy our relationship with him. We enjoy working with his administration,” Garrick said.

The new employees will work exclusively with online products, selling advertisements on such Web sites as Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Bing out of a call center on John Muir Drive near the University at Buffalo North Campus. LocalEdge has hired 16 consultants so far, with 35 more to start training Monday.

The company hopes to have 150 such positions in Amherst by the end of the year and 250 to 500 more by 2015. The base salary for new consultants will be $27,000, but they could earn $45,000 to $55,000 during their first year depending on their sales levels.

The new hires are part the company’s transition to a world in which people often turn to the Internet when they need to find a phone number. The company will print 471,000 directories this year for Erie County, compared with 515,000 last year. In May, rival Verizon asked permission from the state to discontinue residential listings in its phone book—something LocalEdge has done in other markets but has only begun to consider for the Buffalo area.

White Directory Publishers, which started in Buffalo in 1968, was acquired by the Hearst Corp. in 2004.