The Career Centers at Palm Beach State College have partnered with the Florida Power & Light Company to provide part-time job opportunities for students currently enrolled in school.
Through the program, students will receive paid training and earn $12 an hour to work as customer service representatives in FPL’s Customer Care Center located at the company’s office on Village Blvd. in West Palm Beach. FPL expects to have approximately 15 students fill the positions. Students must have at least a 3.0 grade point average and work 20 to 29 hours per week.
“It’s a great benefit because we’re bringing new talent into the organization,’’ FPL Senior Customer Care Manager Silvio Martinez said. “They come in as customer service employees while they are students. This is an opportunity for them to learn customer service skills that are important in any field today. We’ve also had a high rate of student employees become full time after graduation.”
Martinez said students can be majoring in any field, and they can continue to work so long as they are enrolled in school. He said the company offers flexible schedules for students.
“The students give us their school schedule, and we work around it,” he said. “We allow time off for finals and midterms, and we really support them with their career growth. Our goal is for them to succeed in school.”
Leaders at PBSC’s Career Centers said the partnership with FPL is a win-win for the company and the students with the West Palm Beach-area Customer Care Center located between the Palm Beach Gardens and Lake Worth campuses.
“FPL is one of the largest employers in Palm Beach County,” said Karen Cover, manager of the Career Center on the Lake Worth campus. “We are the largest institution of higher learning in Palm Beach County. It only made sense for us to collaborate in this way. It’s such a great opportunity for Palm Beach State College students to get access to professional experience while they are in school. If our students do a great job and if this is a great experience for them, I think we can continue to partner for years to come and grow the program.”
Information sessions with the FPL management team will be held at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 11 in the Center for Bachelor’s Programs Room at the Lake Worth campus, and at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 12 in Room BR 118 at the PBSC Palm Beach Gardens campus. Both sessions will be livestreamed to all campuses at bit.ly/FPLlivestream to give all students access to the information. Students can register for the session on Handshake, a career development platform for colleges and universities, via the Career Center web site at www.palmbeachstate.edu/career.
Students will have until April 6 to apply for the positions in which they will assist customers with opening and closing accounts, reporting outages and billing questions. The eight-week training starts May 12.
For more information, call (561) 868-3066.
