Alta Resources Inc. is bringing its Brea office along on a major expansion, with plans to hire some 700 workers there.
The Neenah, Wis.-based outsourcing company is out to fill full- and part-time positions for permanent and seasonal jobs in customer service and inside sales from now through early December.
Alta hosted a job fair last week at its office on West Imperial Highway to fill those positions—many of which will be assigned to clients in the health insurance segment.
Alta describes itself as a provider of “customer management business process” outsourcing.
“We work for other companies,” said Steve Seidl, its managing director in Brea. “For the most part, we provide call center operations.”
Alta’s hiring spurt is fueled by federal healthcare reform and the upcoming “open enrollment” period where workers sign up for their health insurance coverage for the following year—something that typically necessitates extra workers to handle potentially increased call volumes.
“That is what’s driving a lot of our growth,” Seidl said. “We take those calls on behalf of the client. We’re going to be dedicated—we’re going to be trained just as well as [the client’s direct employees] would be trained, in some cases, better.”
Alta uses significant numbers of part-time workers who are “looking for a flexible schedule,” such as students and parents, Seidl said.
Alta sought out workers at last week’s job fair who “have the qualities for customer care”, according to Seidl, who has worked out of the Brea office for the past 11 years.
“If they have that specific industry experience, that’s nice; but we can teach them that, for the most part. What we can’t teach them [is] what they’re predisposed as to how they are going to handle interactions with customers,” he said.
“Inbound” Work
Alta’s health insurance sales staffers will do what’s called “inbound” work, when potential customers call in and seek to buy policies. Alta is providing licensing for inbound health insurance salespeople, a requirement under current law.
“If they have health insurance sales [experience],” that’s going to be a benefit, Seidl said.
Seidl noted that Alta had worked with healthcare clients prior to the advent of the Affordable Care Act and had been able to “get results” for those clients, leading them to “trust us with more business.”
“The bulk of the work we do in Brea is inbound customer care and sales,” he said.
Alta noted on its website that it intends to allow its clients to “enhance their products and services” by outsourcing certain functions.
“By outsourcing to us, we save companies the hassle, time and expense of revamping their infrastructures, staff levels and solutions,” the company said.
Alta’s other services include business-to-business sales, back-office operations, e-commerce and shipping.
Packaged goods and entertainment are the other major industries Alta targets for business.
Confidentiality agreements prevent Alta from mentioning most of its clients, including health insurance companies. Seidl mentioned that it works for a pair of local public institutions—the Orange County Transit Agency and Metrolink, a commuter railroad line. Alta provides customer service for OCTA’s 636-RIDE telephone lines, among other things.
The company, which was founded in 1995, does not disclose financial information.
It competitors include business process outsourcing services, such as publicly traded Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. in Teaneck, N.J., among others.
Alta generally focuses on working with clients who need between 50 to 500 dedicated call center personnel for their particular tasks, Seidl said.
Hiring
The company previously said in July that it was going to hire 2,500 workers across its four locations. Alta’s other offices are in Fort Myers, Fla., and the Philippines.
It said in a news release that its health insurance clients anticipated more volume during the November-to-February period as more consumers became eligible for insurance coverage under federal healthcare reform.
