If you always kind of thought that turnover is a consistent problem within the call center industry, you win. Recent research from call center hiring solutions provider FurstPerson shows that turnover alone costs organizations $4,284 per term on average.

According to a white paper from FurstPerson, "Searching for the Silver Bullet: Can One Test Alone Improve Quality of Hire?" factoring in the opportunity cost of poor performance "accelerates this cost by a factor of five to ten times depending on your industry and call type."

Some organizations find that using pre-hire assessments supported by empirical based research, job analysis, and validation analysis can help improve the quality of new employees. But is using one assessment, the so-called silver bullet, the best way to improve quality of hire?

You might have heard of the Big Five model of personality profiling, used frequently to predict turnover in call centers. In addition to that assessment, applicants also need the right skills and abilities to perform well.

FurstPerson's white paper, which draws on data from its 2009 Call Center Recruiting and Compensation Survey, finds that 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."

While the Big-Five based personality assessments do play an important role in "developing the story about how a job candidate may potentially perform in your call center role," the paper concludes, it is "critical to understand that personality-job fit is only part of the attrition problem - it is not the sole solution."

As the rest of the paper goes on to show, a job candidate with the right personality will fail without the right skill set. "Moreover," it concludes, "a candidate who has great skills and the wrong personality profile is also likely to fail. The key to success is to use a multi-faceted solution that addresses both skills and personality-job fit."

To download a free copy of this informative white paper, click here.