Booneville, Ky. – Luci Phillips was ready to return to work when she first heard about a new service near her home in Owsley County that helps people land legitimate jobs working from a home office.

“I kind of thought it was just temporary jobs,” Phillips says, describing the type of work she first thought Teleworks USA would help her with. “So, it surprised me that they place you in permanent jobs, and that’s a plus.”

An initiative of the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP), Teleworks USA identifies and develops legitimate remote-work job opportunities with multiple national and global companies. Teleworks USA’s team of expert managers also helps prepare people for the jobs by upskilling them in customer service and technical support workshops, helping them craft strong résumés and hone their interviewing skills, and assisting them in applying for available remote-work positions they can work within their homes or eight Teleworks Hubs.

For Phillips, who had years of experience first in business and then nursing, her first visit to the Teleworks Hub in Booneville was a productive one, and it wouldn’t take long before she was back in the workforce.

Phillips had actually retired from the nursing field due to illness after six years on the job. Fortunately, her health improved, but nursing was no longer an option. That’s when a few of her former colleagues referred her to Teleworks USA, and at the same time she knew a close family member who was also working as a teleworker. She decided that Teleworks USA could be a viable option for her, too, and paid a visit to the Booneville Teleworks Hub to speak with Hub Manager Carla Gabbard.

“My daughter-in-law went to work in August and I thought about it and checked everything out, how it was going with her,” Phillips says. “I came over here and talked to Carla and she started the paperwork.”

Because of her professional background, Phillips was ready to hit the ground running with Teleworks USA. Her business background included bookkeeping and accounting, and she’d also worked as a supervisor. So when she began the application process with Gabbard, it wasn’t long before she’d received a job offer from Concentrix, a global business services company specializing in customer engagement. Within a few weeks she was beginning her first day on the job, working on billing issues over the phone for one of the company’s clients.

“Everyone is well trained so they know what their scope of support is,” Phillips says of the working environment Concentrix promotes. “If you have a problem, you have mentors and floor supervisors you can consult with. It’s very well organized.”

Working from home didn’t provide her with a large challenge to get used to, Phillips adds, because it’s essentially like working from a brick-and-mortar location with the added benefit of not having to commute. She still needs to clock in on time and do the work, and there’s also an added perk of the company’s incentive program, which makes it possible to increase her paycheck for meeting goals on the job.

“As long as you do your job, pay attention to callers and don’t miss work, you’ll make incentives on top of it, and you’re starting pay is good anyway,” she says.

Phillips has been on the job now for nearly eight months, and says she’s glad she made the decision to stop by the Booneville Teleworks Hub and would recommend the service to anyone looking for a new job.

“I would recommend Teleworks, because if you don’t like one thing, there’s other jobs here,” she says. “They have all types of jobs to fit all kinds of personalities or work experiences.”

To find out more about Teleworks USA and how you can get connected with a legitimate work-from-home job, log on to teleworksusa.com or contact your nearest Teleworks USA Hub today. As an initiative of EKCEP, Teleworks USA’s employment services are completely free of charge.

Since 2015, Teleworks USA Hubs in Hazard, Hyden, Annville, Beattyville, Booneville, Harlan, Louisa, and Pike County have helped bring jobs to more than 2,100 Eastern Kentuckians, and those positions carry an estimated $47 million in economic impact in new annual wages to teleworkers across the Eastern Kentucky Coalfields.

EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about EKCEP at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.