Sally Mae to bring 2,000 outsourced jobs back to U.S

In these bleak times when one expects to loose his/her job any day, Sallie Mae has announced to bring back 2,000 outsourced jobs back to the US within the next 18 months.

This welcome move is being seen as a turn around for the nation’s largest private student lender, which was faced with axing costs amid collapsing capital markets and legislative marketing cuts, two years ago.

Sallie Mae, following the example of countless other companies, did not waste anytime to outsource many jobs to third world countries as part of a plan to save $300 million over a 1-year period.

"We were at the point where we couldn't make a student loan at a profit," Chief Executive Albert L. Lord said during a conference call with Associate Press. "The company had to re-engineer itself. It had to cut jobs and it had to move jobs. At least that's how we felt at the time," Lord explained.

But once the cost cuts were made, Sallie Mae started to look into returning those jobs to the U.S.

With the number of jobless reaching 13 million in the country, the impending influx of jobs is being hailed as good news. The jobless rate – at 8.5 percent last month – is expected to reach 10 percent by the end of the year.

Sallie Mae plans to return its 2000 jobs to the US by October 2010, with 600 of those positions reserved for its Wilkes-Barre, PA facility.

The company also runs offices in Lynn Haven, FL; Fishers, IN; Killeen, TX and Newark. Delaware.

The Reston, VA based Sallie Mae saw more than 800 attendees for a job fair it hosted for its Delaware based operations in December last year, with at least 2300 applications being submit online. The company said at the time that it planned to hire 1100 workers for the facility by the end of 2011.

Apart from call center operations, Sallie Mae will be looking for employees to fill information technology and operations support roles.

Sallie Mae, also known as SLM Corp. has more than 8,000 US employees. It manages $180 billion in education loans and serves 10 million student and parent customers.