Just because most of the United States is averaging around 10 percent unemployment doesn’t mean it’s gotten any easier for call centers to find decent, qualified people to work as agents. If anything, the recruiting and hiring process has become more challenging, as there’s a wider range of people looking for work and call center managers have even more applications, resumes and interviews to wade through in order to find the “right” employees.

 

Often in a down economy you end up with a flood of people looking for “any job” to tie them over as they look for something new that is related to their career. Many people will look for call center work over other alternatives, such restaurant or retail, perhaps because it more resembles a “white collar” job (keeps them behind a desk and out of sight from neighbors and relatives).

 

Now, you might assume having a flood of “over-qualified” applicants would be a boon to a call center, but that’s not necessarily the case. Call centers have notoriously high turnover rates and in recent years companies have been trying to find new ways to boost agent retention (however a recent study reveals that the recession has, in fact, led to slightly lower call center attrition rates). Hiring someone who will obviously only be taking the job for the short-term certainly doesn’t help the attrition problem. Furthermore, if you are thinking that hiring candidates with a corporate background is going to improve customer service, perhaps you’re not considering the mix of the agents and how that might impact your current call center “culture.”

 

At the same time, there might be certain people out there who have never been exposed to call center work before who might actually enjoy it – and might be good at it – and might genuinely want to take the position for the medium- to long-term. The question is, how do call center managers determine who is most likely to succeed in the role of call center agent – and find people who have the right skills and attributes to handle the position?

 

Call center hiring solutions provider FurstPerson offers Web-based pre-employment screening and job skills assessment software – including simulations – designed help call center managers qualify job candidates and improve the probability of making the “right” hire. FurstPerson claims that with its call center hiring solutions, companies can reduce 0-90 day attrition by 10 to 50 percent. What’s more, they can improve new hire performance by 5 to 20 percent. The company also offers recruitment consulting services to help companies build targeted campaigns to attract the “right” job candidates – as well as site selection analysis to help companies locate their call centers in fertile recruiting areas where they will succeed.

 

Recently FurstPerson won two 2009 Product of the Year awards from Technology Marketing Corporation’s Customer Interaction Solutions magazine for its 1stSolve and 1stHire call center hiring solutions. 1stSolve is used to evaluate a job candidates’ ability to work in complex call center roles. Test questions are presented dynamically via a sophisticated Computer Adaptive Test engine. The solution is designed to balance test security with test efficiency. 1stHire is a comprehensive call center hiring solution offering reporting and analytics, hiring workflow, candidate communication tools, scheduling tools and pre-employment assessment capabilities including FurstPerson’s award-winning CC Audition call center simulation.

 

FurstPerson also offer many free resources that are helpful to the call center industry at large. For example, the company is in a prime position to conduct its own market research, in cooperation with its customers, by collecting baseline data from the online tests and simulations it provides. This data can be collected on an anonymous basis, aggregated and analyzed to reveal significant trends in call center recruiting and hiring. For example, the company recently released a study revealing that, despite the recession, roughly 68 percent of call center managers plan to increase hiring over the next 12 months by more than 10 percent, compared to 2008.