Youths see promise as support jobs stay local

QUINCY -- It is mid-morning at the State Street Corp. call center, and the phones are ringing. Young workers with headsets, stationed at a bank of cubicles by the window, speak in soothing tones to im-patient State Street employees dialing in from Europe or Asia or the West Coast.

Squinting into an IBM desktop computer monitor under fluorescent lights, Xavier Clifton , a 20-year-old contract employee who graduated from Cathedral High School in Boston's South End in 2004, is talking a San Francisco bank manager through the process of creating a temporary password for a Lotus Notes program.

``How are you entering your ID? It's capital Y as in yellow, capital A as in Apple, the number two, and capital P as in purple."

At a time when many manufacturing jobs have evaporated, low-income high school graduates are gravitating toward technology support and other back-office jobs, a class of work more associated with Bangalore than Boston. Yet, several financial services giants, including State Street, Bank of America Corp., and Putnam Investments, are running local operations that serve their employees across the nation or overseas.

``We have a voracious need for technology people," said Richard W. Pearl , a vice president for State Street. ``So, not only can we fulfill our own needs, but we can help the Boston community."

Though tens of thousands of US customer service jobs have been shipped south or overseas where labor and other costs are lower, a number of local companies have expanded some support operations here over the past year, usually to serve their far-flung outposts. Such jobs are a benefit to the region of having financial businesses such as mutual funds or wealth management headquartered here. Keeping such jobs has been getting harder as the number of corporate headquarters in the city shrinks, even as they have become an important port of entry.

``No one gets a bonus for hiring low-income minority kids," said former high-tech entrepreneur Gerald Chertavian , founder and executive director of Year Up, a Boston nonprofit group that has trained hundreds of city youths in communications and technology skills. ``It takes leadership for companies to step up."

Not all of the jobs in back-office operations, like the 55-person ``security administration services" unit operating around the clock in North Quincy, are entry level. But most of the Year Up trainees joining the back-office workforce -- typically in technology support positions -- start as temps or apprentices. Some are promoted to full-time positions, where they can earn considerably more than they could at retail or fast-food jobs.

``This gives me a new experience I can put on my resume," said Clifton, who worked at Toys R Us in his first job after high school. He commutes at least an hour each morning to call center, taking a bus from his Chelsea neighborhood to East Boston, then getting on the Blue Line and switching lines twice en route to Quincy.

Companies are moving toward a ``global delivery model" for technology services, locating jobs both here and overseas, said John C. McCarthy , vice president at Forrester Research in Cambridge. While many have set up shop in India, where they pay roughly a quarter of what they pay in the United States , they also keep some functions here . ``The biggest challenge everybody has is finding good people," McCarthy said. ``If you're not running the process well downstairs, what makes you think moving it 8,000 miles away is going to make it better?"

Business groups don't track the number of call-center, help-desk, or other back-office jobs in the Boston area. But here and nationally, entry-level customer service jobs can pay between $25,000 and $35,000 a year, according to the nonprofit consulting group Jobs for the Future. By contrast, the annual full-time wage at a fast-food restaurant is closer to $15,000.

``Many of these are good first-step jobs in the technology field," said Susan Goldberger , director of new ventures at Jobs for the Future in Boston, which is dedicated to improving educational opportunities for the underprivileged. ``In the technology world, the main thing employers want to see is that you've had prior experience." To move up the ranks, though, apprentices need to save money and take advantage of their employers' tuition reimbursement programs to get college degrees, she said.

While technology support jobs represent a path into the labor force, there may not be enough of them to offset the loss in factory jobs that once punched tickets into the middle class for urban youth. Still, technology skills learned in back offices are transferable, an important asset in an economy where such jobs can be moved easily by employers. In fact, companies are continually consolidating help desks and call centers around the globe, often through streamlining moves in the aftermath of mergers. State Street, with 21,000 employees worldwide, recently moved some support work to Quincy from an investment business it acquired from Germany's Deutsche Bank.

``The calls come in, and you need people to be really good on the phone," said Madge M. Meyer , executive vice president of global infrastructure services at State Street, which has hired 50 apprentices from the Year Up program and promoted 9 to permanent jobs. ``I tell them, `We're providing you with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work for one of the world's top financial services companies,' " she said.

Contractors and apprentices hired from the Year Up program don't get health benefits from their employers, but those promoted to staff positions get benefits, additional technology training, and, in many cases, tuition reimbursement toward college .

Bank of America, which consolidated its global wealth and investment management unit in Boston after gobbling up FleetBoston Financial Corp. in 2004, moved back-office work here from New York last February to provide software support for 70 outside money managers who execute stock trades on behalf of customers. One of its apprentices, 20-year-old Indy L. Castillo Martinez of South Boston, who graduated from English High School in Jamaica Plain last year, makes sure stocks are listed correctly in the bank's account system.

``I'm learning a whole lot of new things," Martinez said. ``I'm using Microsoft Excel, e-mailing back and forth with traders, and doing everything within our time limit. My goal is to get hired here. Then I could go back to school and get my bachelor's in business management."

Year Up, which has operations in Boston, Cambridge, Providence, New York, and Washington, runs a rigorous training program. In addition to learning computers and software applications, students accepted in the program learn teamwork and conflict resolution. Chertavian said the group wants to prepare urban youths for the workplace and give companies confidence in the local workforce.

``This gives us another pipeline to talent in the Boston area," said Tim Huval , senior vice president for human resources in Bank of America's global wealth and investment management business.

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.