Call Center Hiring

Research from FurstPerson's 2009 Contact Center Recruiting and Compensation Survey, released in December, show that turnover alone costs organizations $4,284 per agent on average.

And when you factor in the possibility of poor performance, that multiplies this cost by a factor of five to ten times, depending on your industry and call type, according to FurstPerson officials.

Generally the use of pre-hire assessments, supported by empirical based research, job analysis, and validation analysis, can help improve the quality of hire of new call center agents, FurstPerson's research shows.

But recent research reports discussing call center attrition have focused on using one assessment -- a personality inventory -- to combat attrition. FurstPerson officials say they find that while "the Big Five is a well established model of personality profiling that has been shown to predict turnover in contact centers," it's not enough to have just the right personality profile: "Applicants must also have the right skills and abilities to perform well."

In their view, then, best practices in applicant screening suggest an approach that includes skills or work ability assessment via simulations, motivational and personality-job fit (work attitudes) assessments, and work habits fit via bio-data assessments.

FurstPerson's 4-Quadrant model is put forth by company officials as a reflection of the "culmination of our experience and research and highlights the multi-dimensional nature of employee performance within contact centers."

According to FurstPerson officials, an employee's on-the-job success is a function of what an individual can do, which includes work habits (e.g., dependability, detail orientation, organizational skills), cognitive capabilities (e.g., critical thinking, decision-making, problem-solving) and interpersonal characteristics (e.g., sociability, interpersonal sensitivity, empathy), combined with what an individual will do, which depends on his or her work-related attitudes, interests, and motivations.

"Research clearly supports the value of a multi-tiered approach over personality assessment in isolation," company officials say, adding that in fact, "work sample assessments, like simulation assessments, have proven that they predict performance more effectively than any other type of assessment."