Where the jobs are . . .

Carriers are hiring once again, but this time the rules are different. After years of steadily slashing jobs by the thousands, carriers of all kinds are looking for qualified people. Most openings are at smaller, nontraditional carriers-particularly wireless and cable TV companies. The good news is that these companies show the best potential for growth over the coming years.

But service providers are placing a premium on a potential employee's interpersonal skills, computer literacy and initiative to learn, whether it's dealing with new technology in the field or with customers in a call center. The bottom line in the deregulated telecom industry is that the new jobs will add to or directly affect the quality of services a carrier offers.

Such demanding and uncertain hiring trends are shaking up the once-staid telecom bureaucracy. So what does it take to succeed?

The drive to improve service BellSouth Cellular sees its growth in retail and direct sales, customer service and network deployment. The number of engineers last year grew 20% to more than 1400, while hiring for customer service representatives jumped 18% to more than 2500, says Roy McAllister, vice president of corporate affairs.

Nynex, trying desperately to overcome its poor service reputation, hired 1500 field technicians and customer service representatives last year. The Bell regional holding company expects to hire an additional 1000 employees this year, even though it cut its work force over the past five years by more than 23,000-from 88,903 in 1991 to 65,250 in 1996.

The increase was propelled by a surge in demand for access lines, primarily from telecommuters, small businesses and baby boomers' PC-savvy children, says Tom O'Gara, managing director of employment and staffing at Nynex.

U S West, another RHC that has been excoriated for being slow to respond to phone service requests, last year added 225 field technicians in Colorado to upgrade its service and network. Despite this, the carrier is forging ahead with a downsizing that was announced in 1993 and has cut 6000 jobs-many from management-of the 9000 targeted. U S West insists it has turned around service problems, primarily by upgrading call handling systems and more efficiently routing service requests.

The carrier also is beefing up as it prepares to enter the wireless and long-distance markets. "We're getting ready to build a wireless customer care center that will handle customers' questions, similar to what cellular operations have done," says Greg Winn, vice president of sales and service for mass markets at U S West.

The carrier's data arm, !nterprise Networking Services, has seen business more than double each year since it started about five years ago. "With new technologies such as [digital subscriber line] about to enter the market, !nterprise is a phenomenal place to be," Winn says. "In that area, we compete on servicing and consulting, as well as the hard service, because a lot of customers know what they want to do.

As the carrier prepares for competition, it also is aggressively hiring new talent from outside the U S West family for its core telephone business, Winn says. Because U S West's 14-state service territory includes some of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S., near double-digit growth is continuing in the core business. As with Nynex, access line demand is driving the expansion, particularly in Arizona and Colorado. The phenomenon is attributed to Internet access and fax and modem use at home.

The trend is reflected in a recent Arthur Andersen study, "Net Results 96," which found annual average growth of almost 11% in new access lines for local exchange carriers from 1991 to 1995 (Figure 1).

Although LECs decreased their work forces an average of 15% between 1991 and 1995 (Figure 2), second-tier LECs-those other than the Bell companies-are experiencing the greatest growth in access lines and are hiring at the fastest rate, according to the study. MFS, which merged with UUNet in May and announced its merger with WorldCom in August (Telephony, Sept. 2, 1996, page 7), skyrocketed from 565 employees in 1992 to 3592 in 1995, the study shows (Table 1).

As MFS grows, it will necessarily continue hiring people highly skilled in technology and engineering for both local network design and customer service and fulfillment, says Jeff Gruber, senior vice president of human resources at MFS-Global Network Services. Software engineers and data specialists are in demand, both locally and globally.

Other carriers that have expanded their work forces include Alltel, Century Telephone, Cincinnati Bell, Citizens, Frontier Corp., Lincoln Tel and TDS. Frontier, which has experienced 18 consecutive quarters of double-digit earnings growth, is hiring nationwide in sales, customer service and technical areas, including the hiring of software engineers and systems architects to help with billing needs.

"There are always a lot of openings," says John Schultz, director of corporate staffing for Frontier.

Frontier, the fifth-largest interexchange carrier, offers an integrated package of services, including cellular, local, long-distance and data, to small and mid-sized businesses. It is building its own fiber network through more than 100 cities nationwide, scheduled to be complete in mid-1998 (Telephony, Oct. 28, 1996, page 7).

Six of the eight CATV operators surveyed by Arthur Andersen also increased their work forces between 1991 and 1995. These included Adelphia, Cablevision, Century, Comcast, Continental and Jones Intercable. The exceptions were Cox Communications and Tele-Communications Inc.

Jobs may no longer be permanent, however, and sometimes the best assignments on the technology side may come out of contract labor, to which carriers also are turning, says Sabrina Starr, national recruiting manager for TAD Telecommunications Services, Norcross, Ga.

This trend bodes well for the experienced technician who is well versed in a number of different vendor platforms and willing to go where the jobs are. Contract work runs the gamut from instructors and Macintosh technicians to outside plant engineers. The technicians are needed to move, add to or otherwise change DMS, 5ESS and SL1 switches. The engineers must know how to design subscriber carrier and fiber optic systems, as well as aerial, buried and underground cable routes.

Screening for attributes A job seeker who expects an immediate interview followed by an assignment is in for a surprise. These days, he or she first must prove to be capable of handling the task.

Nynex, for example, screens prospective field technicians by testing their technological knowledge and flexibility, especially in new situations. Once hired, the technicians undergo three weeks of training to learn about safety, pole-climbing, and basic repair and installation. A coach or peer reviews their work.

Customer service representatives are expected to have a pleasant disposition on the phone and, preferably, some sales experience. Prospective employees must pass a cognitive abilities test and a 45-minute role-playing session, in which they are judged on their responses to angry and demanding customers. "It's a very good evaluation tool," O'Gara says.

The service reps go through a 12-week training course, learning about Nynex, its products and services and the relationship of this information to the increasingly competitive atmosphere. They are expected to listen to customers, extract information and offer suggestions using negotiation skills they've learned during training.

Field technicians and customer service reps must display a professional attitude and know more about technology than ever before, O'Gara says.

Employees are accepting the challenge, as evidenced by much cross-training. Nynex workers are given time off to update their skills and be retrained, as required under the carrier's union contract.

"We see movement between the service rep and the technicians, and from operators and administrative assistants to customer service representatives and central office positions," O'Gara says.

Other carriers insist on intensive training as well. AT&T spends $500 million to $1 billion each year on training. BellSouth Cellular requires that every employee-whether receptionist or engineer-take 40 hours of training each year. "We want to have absolute control over how our customer base is taken care of," McAllister says.

The telecom world also is turning to private companies to augment training, and to save time and money. Teletutor, a Manhasset, N.Y.-based company, develops computer-based training courses about voice and data networking technologies that use text, animation and, in some cases, audio. Customers can download the courses from Teletutor's home page.

The hottest course is "Introduction to Telecommunications," says Jim Cooper, Teletutor president and chief executive officer. Other popular topics are asynchronous transfer mode and wireless communications. Sections dedicated to ISDN and asymmetrical digital subscriber line are also being introduced.

New employees taking the place of retiring industry veterans haven't had the benefit of learning their trade from the ground up. "It's hard to do internetworking if you don't know all the networks out there," Cooper notes.

Employees who quickly move up the corporate ladder have little time to learn about the industry before they're assigned to other positions, says Tom Johnson, Teletutor's vice president of quality assurance. "I wonder if that isn't contributing a lot to a lack of seasoned professionals," he says.

Top officials appear to be getting the message. "We're starting to see a lot more than lip service being given to training," Johnson says.

CATV operators also are putting new emphasis on instruction. TKR Cable of Warren, N.J., last year consolidated its three largest customer service systems in the New York/New Jersey area into a teleservicing center to handle inbound calls. The calls are separated into groups-sales, service, or repair and billing-and routed to a service representative with expertise in the appropriate area, says Brian Hickey, TKR's vice president of marketing. The reorganization will be particularly important after the CATV company completes its rebuild to a two-way, 750 MHz system.

TKR also provides a training center that features a headend for hands-on training and a tree farm so workers can practice climbing poles and handling wiring.

Bundling poses new challenges By offering customers bundled, diverse services, carriers are transforming what once was considered a necessary evil to save money-the call center-into an integral part of their business strategies, says Jim Suzansky, an industrial organizational psychologist, electrical engineer and partner in Arthur Andersen's Global Communications and Entertainment Group.

Now the call center has become a way to give valued customers favorable treatment and differentiate levels of service.

"Most [phone companies] are saying they have to provide a better and more complicated kind of customer service than they've had in recent history," he says. The attitude change results in employee retraining and team building.

"The end game is having customer service representatives who'd do what you want them to do because they know it's the right thing to do-not because someone is looking over their shoulder," says Joseph P. O'Leary, a partner with Arthur Andersen Global Communications and Entertainment Group. To get those results, carriers must develop their employees' service outlook so they convey that they care about the customer.

Similarly, supervisors will be challenged to stop giving orders and start coaching and mentoring. "That's one of the toughest transitions," says Suzansky.

"Twenty or so years ago, when you joined the phone company, it was considered career employment," he says. "If you worked hard and kept your nose clean, you could spend your career there." Today's environment holds no guarantees, so employees must take greater responsibility for their own expertise and performance.

Employers, too, have an obligation to help workers through these cultural changes, O'Leary notes. "Through no fault of their own, [the employees] find themselves in a rapidly changing environment," he says. "Many have served the company faithfully for many years.

Employers must make sure they give the workers an opportunity to succeed in a new environment, and they must be careful not to concentrate on new employees, O'Leary says. "Everyone is afraid of change. It's the unknown.

An admittedly ill-conceived public relations strategy focused public scorn upon AT&T when, in preparation for its split into three companies, the organization announced on Jan. 2, 1996, that it would slash 40,000 jobs in three years.

Of the 40,000 targeted positions, 17,000 were to come from the interexchange carrier, which retained the AT&T name, with the remaining 23,000 cuts to come from the equipment manufacturing arm, spun off last year as Lucent Technologies. The majority of the jobs were to be cut in 1996.

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich and populist politicians attacked AT&T's decision. Newscaster Lesley Stahl tracked down Chairman Robert Allen on "60 Minutes," asking him to defend his $4 million-plus yearly compensation in the wake of one of telecom's biggest job cutbacks.

A year's reckoning has revealed some twists of fate. As of late September, hiring for jobs in high-growth areas at AT&T had almost kept pace with the number cut from the payroll-and job cuts at Lucent were also offset, to some extent, by newly created positions.

"With one hand, we have been phasing out what we consider to be non-essential offices, jobs and products. And on the other, we've been adding people to new jobs in growing areas," said an AT&T spokesman.

Although the IXC arm likely will exceed its aim to phase out 8000 jobs in the first year of its three-year organization, the overall employee count had been reduced only slightly by the end of September (see figure). And two of every five employees whose jobs were on the chopping block landed other assignments with AT&T, the spokesman said.

The fast-moving wireless, customer care and information systems consulting groups account for AT&T's growth. The wireless business, with 10,000 people in 1995, is expected to grow to 20,000 in 2000. Other jobs in demand are customer service agents and management consultants.

Lucent's goal was to slash its payroll by 16,000 employees during 1996. As of Sept. 30, it had cut 12,600 positions. The downsizing stemmed primarily from voluntary retirements, sell-offs of AT&T Paradyne and a circuit-board plant in Richmond, Va., and outsourced internal information technology functions such as help desk and computer maintenance and installation services, a Lucent spokesman said.

Yet high-flying divisions enabled Lucent, too, to soften the blow somewhat with increased hiring, resulting in a net job cut of 7000. Lucent saw its growth in microelectronics, wireless, software development and the data networking segment of business communications systems.

The restructuring, though not as massive as was first thought, hit white collar managers particularly hard. Other companies recruiting workers want "doers," not managers of doers, the AT&T spokesman said. The lesson? Managers can no longer define their worth by the traditional standards of their budget, the number of employees reporting to them and whether the office has a window and a carpeted floor.

As for executive compensation, Alex Mandl, believed to be Allen's heir apparent, scooped up a $20 million signing bonus when he left AT&T to join a fixed wireless startup in August (Telephony, Aug. 26, 1996, page 6). If Mandl, the No. 2 person, is worth $20 million, what does that say-theoretically at least-about No. 1? the AT&T spokesman asked.

In hindsight, AT&T's spin on the job-slashing story lacked a historical context. From 1984 to 1995, the IXC's payroll averaged 900 fewer people each month, excluding acquisitions, the spokesman said. "For lots of our people, it was not that much of a disruption."-SG

Two of every five AT&T employees whose jobs were deemed non-essential as part of the telecommunications giant's reorganization have landed new assignments within the company. Their good fortune is attributed to their willingness to retrain and keep up with evolving technology. Several AT&T and Lucent Technologies workers have trained for new jobs at AT&T's customer care center in Pittsburgh, which has doubled its initial 100-employee roster since it opened in March 1995. Three shared their experiences with Telephony.

Sharon Gaal felt like part of a family after 13 years of working the cord boards at AT&T's International Operating Center in Pittsburgh. She handled challenging assignments, including aircraft and ship traffic as well as connecting calls between the U.S. and 232 other countries.

Gaal enjoyed the excitement of being first to learn world news, the variety of calls and the flexibility of working a split shift. In 1983, she worked on her own time to notify families stateside that their relatives in Beirut were safe after a terrorist drove a truck filled with explosives into the U.S. Marine headquarters there.

When Gaal started work as an international operator, six centers existed. The one in Pittsburgh is now the sole survivor of technological revolution, and it is being downsized.

But not Gaal. She found a new home at AT&T's customer care center across the Monongahela River from the international center as the contact for billing complaints to public utility commissions, the Federal Communications Commission and AT&T Chairman Robert Allen's office. She investigates the background of each case, taking hours, and sometimes days, to learn every nuance. "When I call the customer back, I know the case inside and out. I have the confidence I know what I'm talking about," Gaal says.

The transition wasn't easy, but Gaal's positive thinking saw her through. Six months of training brought Gaal face-to-face with complex billing issues and a Unix computer system. "There were moments," she says. "But in looking back, it was a great opportunity."-SG