MyFamily growing in Utah

PROVO — MyFamily.com Inc. is creating a renaissance at a former Sears, Roebuck and Co. call center, moving about 400 jobs to the site and planning to add more.

MyFamily.com, specializing in family history information available through the Internet, has moved the jobs after outgrowing a call center at 500 E. Timpanogos Circle, Orem.

While spokeswoman Mary Dondiego did not disclose how quickly the company will fill out the facility at 235 E. 1600 South, she noted that the company has added about 150 jobs since the beginning of the year, bringing its employment total to about 750.

"We will be adding hundreds of jobs in the next few months," she said.

The leased 49,000-square-foot building is ready for growth. "We're hiring every week," Dondiego said. "The reason for the move is that we simply outgrew the old call center. The old one had about 400 call center agents. The new one at full capacity can hold about 700. Because of that, we're hiring for all positions in the call center, including technical support, customer service and inbound and outbound sales reps."

To mark the move, the company is throwing a grand opening celebration from 3 to 7 p.m. Wednesday.

The Orem center had been operating at full capacity, and one or two teams of call center agents had occupied the corporate office in the Riverwoods area of Provo. All call center jobs are in the new facility now.

People interested in the call center jobs can apply during Wednesday's activities. The company is looking for people with sales or call center experience. The average pay is about $12 per hour. Full-time workers also get various benefits.

"We've been growing rapidly, and we've been working up to this over the past couple of years," Dondiego said. "We've grown nearly 100 percent annually as a company since 2001, so this was in the making for the past couple of years."

MyFamily.com has more than 1.5 million subscribers and more than 10 million people using its Internet resources each month. Its network of properties include MyFamily.com, Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com and RootsWeb.com. The company also publishes Family Tree Maker software, Ancestry Magazine, Genealogical Computing Magazine, more than 50 book titles and several databases on CD-ROM.

"More than 60 percent of the U.S. adult population is interested in family history," Dondiego said. "That's 120 million people in the U.S. There has been growth and just the increased interest in the hobby, and our growth is evident of that as well."

Sears shuttered the Provo call center in October 2001, leaving 365 people out of work. Tele-service activities there were consolidated into Sears centers in San Antonio and Austin, Texas. The facility had been operating at full capacity of 700 as late as 1998, taking catalog orders for the company.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com

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