A qualification to Keebler's post above - I said that the appearance of resumes at large corporations generally doesn't matter. At other smaller companies it might still make a bit of a difference though. Obviously in Keebler's experience it does so it's a point definitely worth considering.
I also agree on spelling though. If I see a resume with a spelling mistake it just screams out to me that the individual is not detail oriented and I immediately toss the resume into the reject pile. I have actually told our HR folks to not give me resumes with spelling mistakes, nor any with poor grammer.
Something else you might want to check out is an agency like Addeco. They place temps and contract people in a variety of different positions. If you're just looking to get started again in the real world, go for a 6-month or 12-month placement somewhere and get a feel for that company.
As for call center itself, we never hire people at my company "to answer phones". Rather we look for customer service people who can handle a large quantity of knowledge then apply it towards problem-solving. We have a very broad product line that are all similar but different and most have different sorts of implications when it comes to taxes and stuff like that. (I'm in financial services.) So our "phone" people spend more than 6 months just learning stuff before we let them fly solo on the phones. Once there they are taking questions from anyone almost about anything and they need to know either what the answer is, or how to get to the answer within the call.
The reason I say all this is that in some call centre areas, the skill set goes much beyond answering the phone in a pleasant manner. You obviously have a fairly wide skill set (managing riding school for example) so you want to, you should be able to position yourself towards a more complicated call centre job than simple answering of phones for Pizza Pizza or something like that.
I also agree on spelling though. If I see a resume with a spelling mistake it just screams out to me that the individual is not detail oriented and I immediately toss the resume into the reject pile. I have actually told our HR folks to not give me resumes with spelling mistakes, nor any with poor grammer.
Something else you might want to check out is an agency like Addeco. They place temps and contract people in a variety of different positions. If you're just looking to get started again in the real world, go for a 6-month or 12-month placement somewhere and get a feel for that company.
As for call center itself, we never hire people at my company "to answer phones". Rather we look for customer service people who can handle a large quantity of knowledge then apply it towards problem-solving. We have a very broad product line that are all similar but different and most have different sorts of implications when it comes to taxes and stuff like that. (I'm in financial services.) So our "phone" people spend more than 6 months just learning stuff before we let them fly solo on the phones. Once there they are taking questions from anyone almost about anything and they need to know either what the answer is, or how to get to the answer within the call.
The reason I say all this is that in some call centre areas, the skill set goes much beyond answering the phone in a pleasant manner. You obviously have a fairly wide skill set (managing riding school for example) so you want to, you should be able to position yourself towards a more complicated call centre job than simple answering of phones for Pizza Pizza or something like that.
