FurstPerson, a Chicago-based company that provides pre-employment hiring solutions to the call center industry, recently released a white paper, “8 Steps to Great Contact Center Hiring,” to highlight the necessary steps for successful call center hiring.

 

The company offers simulation tools, assessment tests and other resources to help call centers find, hire and keep the right employees.

 

Through their 1stStep hiring system for example, businesses can find better quality job candidates by using Web-based employee selection assessments.

 

To begin the call center hiring process, businesses must first outline their desired business outcomes and which agent performance metrics are necessary for achieving their goals.

 

Next, it is important for businesses to set a clear definition of each job and the necessary worker characteristics.

 

Once this is defined, businesses must choose the predictive assessments that will help measure candidate performance in those roles.

 

After these measures have been taken, it is vital that businesses hold on to the quality they seek in candidates and don’t fall victim to reducing their expectations just to bring in new candidates. These relaxed standards, the white paper notes, result in the hiring of people with lower potential for success, which contributes further to the cycle of attrition in the call center.

 

To help bring in qualified candidates, best practices followed by already successful call centers include bringing in recruits from person-to-person and Internet sources rather than choosing to bring in applicants from newspaper ads or job fairs. These hires have shown more promise in past observations.

 

Also, the white paper reminds businesses to take hold of quality candidates quickly as they are the first to leave the job scene and are typically only on the market for 5 to 10 days.

 

By carefully focusing recruiting efforts and creating strategies that relate with the company’s overall goals, call centers can reduce attrition and attain quality hires.