iQor, Thompson Industrial hiring in Charleston area

For two companies with Charleston-area offices, the economic recovery is in full swing.

iQor, a global customer service business, seeks to hire 90 more people to staff its call center on Dorchester Road by the end of the year. Thompson Industrial Services, which cleans manufacturing facilities, is looking for 50 more employees at its Sumter headquarters and another 30 based out of its Ward Avenue office in North Charleston by the end of next month.

“It’s always good when one of our folks is adding people,” Jon Baggett, Dorchester County’s economic development director, said, referring to iQor.

“They’re great, great jobs for a certain niche of the population who needs to have flexible time and hours,” said Baggett, speaking from a trade show in Las Vegas.

iQor, which has nearly 14,000 employees worldwide, also hosted a career fair in March “as part of its efforts to hire more than 100 agents due to ongoing growth in its customer service business, particularly in the financial services and telecommunications industries,” according to a news release at the time.

Robert Burke, a spokesman for iQor, said those trends have continued for the call center, which already employs several hundred people.

“Primarily the telecom industry here is driving the growth,” Burke said Monday, without revealing any of the company’s clientele.

According to Monday’s release, iQor applicants should live within 30 miles of 8440 Dorchester Road; have a high-school diploma or GED and customer service experience; and have computer and verbal skills. They will be handling “inbound and outbound customer care phone calls.”

Thompson Industrial Services, which provides hydroblasting and vacuum services, already employs about 650 workers in 20 offices throughout eight Southeastern states, according to a Sumter Economic Development news release. About half of them are in South Carolina.

The open positions are for service technicians, equipment operators, supervisors and management trainees.

A message left at Thomson’s North Charleston office for further details was not immediately returned Monday.

Reach Brendan Kearney at 937-5906.

and follow him on Twitter at @kearney_brendan.