(apply online: Visit CyraCom's Web page and click on the Careers link: cyracom.com)

 

A growing Tucson-based medical translation service announced plans Friday to hire and train 200 to 250 translators here over the next six months, some to start a paid training program in late March, and another 250 next year.

The jobs will pay $10 an hour, and $8.50 an hour during a three-week, 120-hour training period, said CyraCom's chief financial officer, Susan Sweeney.

She said employees who complete 90 days on the job will get a $1.50-an-hour bonus for the training hours, bringing the training period pay up to $10 retroactively. They are also eligible for benefits, including health care, paid time off and a 401(k) matching up to 3 percent of the employee's wages.

CyraCom offers hospitals and other medical institutions over-the-telephone translation services for non-English-speaking patients and customers around the clock, 365 days a year, Sweeney said.

The bulk of CyraCom's translation work is from Spanish to English, but Sweeney said the company offers translation in 150 languages and is branching out into non-medical work.

She said people who are bilingual but are not comfortable with medical terminology are still invited to apply, and will learn medical terminology during the training period.

A location and time for a CyraCom job fair will be announced as soon as the company settles on a Tucson site, she said.

The company already operates translation centers in Nogales (78 employees) and Las Cruces, N.M., (48 employees), and has 24 working from home, handling phone calls from client hospitals and other medical facilities throughout the United States.

Although the firm's corporate headquarters are in Tucson, Sweeney said this will be the company's first translation center here.

She said the privately held company was founded here in the mid-1990s by Tucsonans Lex Sears, Gerry Tumarkin and Michael Kasser and other investors.

Depressed real estate prices and a bilingual work force are making it possible for the company to open the Tucson center and continue to operate in the U.S., Sweeney said. She said some other translation firms use "offshore" workers and sites to service U.S. clients.