Cincinnati, OH company, Convergys, has announced in a press release that they will be offering 400 new jobs in the Jacksonville contact center. This comes shortly after Belgian company Delhaize closed down all of its Jacksonville-area Food Lion grocery stores, putting 700 people out of work. The jobs offered by Convergys will be for seasonal and nonseasonal work in customer service and sales positions. According to the press release, the seasonal jobs will be for a lawn car company and the non seasonal jobs will be for a telecommunications company.

While the expected hires by Convergys do not completely make up for the jobs lost due to the closing of the Food Lion chain, they do help the boost the area’s numbers to some extent. Other good news for Jacksonville’s jobless include a report from staffing firm Robert Half Management Resources stating that Jacksonville companies will indeed be hiring new workers in 2012. Robert Half division director Nancy Andersen says that companies are more optimistic than they were at the beginning of the recession and that they want to replace the positions that they lost during the course of the recent economic downturn. Another factor is the end of the 2011 budget season and the ability to spend again on technology.

The jobs, however, are likely to be in technical, financial and accounting fields and therefore not of much value to the average former Food Lion employee. According to Andersen, the majority of the jobs being offered are likely to be for skilled professionals with advance degrees.