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One of the great, unsung advantages of using remote agents is the opportunity to vastly expand a contact center’s recruitment radius.

Bricks and mortar limits the hiring of in-house agents to the local commuting area, remote agent recruitment potentially extends the recruitment area to everywhere there is high-speed Internet.
Of course, the wonderful potential of unlimited recruitment reach can’t be fulfilled unless the contact center jettisons the conventional recruitment process of requiring agent applicants come into the bricks and mortar to apply. After all, an applicant on the east coast isn’t going to fly to the west coast for a contact center job interview.

So logically, it is inevitable that the recruitment of remote agents must become an entirely remote event. In other words, every step of the recruitment process from job posting to resume reviews, to personal interviews, to the final training graduation and the awarding of a job contract has to be executed entirely online.
Remote recruitment is certainly not something within the capability of Monster.com. or any of the similar job advertising boards. Instead, it requires a Web site process specially designed for the purpose. The good news is such a Web site has been developed and is already an important part of the remote programs of some major corporations. The site is called ContractXchange.com
25,000 Agent Members. And Counting.

ContractXchange.com is the first complete, end-to-end system of online recruitment. Contact centers go to ContractXchange.com when they want to recruit their own (not outsourced) remote agents. The Web site gives client contact centers access to an inventory of over 25,000 Member Agents, each of whom have to undergo the comprehensive CX Remote Certification Process before they are fully qualified to apply to one of the posted jobs in the site.

The Certification Process involves a series of online tests to determine whether job seekers have the basic computer equipment and skills to work remotely. Every ContractXchange Member is asked to undergo an online typing test and an online equipment specifications check plus an Internet connection speed test. In addition, Members are required to complete a CX Multi-Media Resume that provides clients with not only the essential background information and references, but also a personal voice recording and a video.

Only after marshaling the essential credentials of Certification are Members ready to apply for one of the remote agents jobs posted on the site. So yes, it takes a bit of time and commitment for the job applicants. However, on the recruitment side, it has never been easier for the hiring corporations.
See Them. Hear Them. Hire Them.

Each client contact center of ContractXchange.com has their own fully secure section on the site, equipped with all the data and communication tools required for the online recruitment process. A recruiting contact center simply fills a Job Posting for display on the ContractXchange Job Roster and waits for the multimedia resumes of job seekers to show in their private section’s Applicant List.

Then, it’s a matter working down the list, opening and reviewing the resume information plus the voice and video clips. For even deeper review, there are online interview rooms inside ContractXchange where clients can invite applicants for live, face-to-face talks and presentations. Those applicants who qualify are then sent an invitation to register for the hiring contact center’s o-line training class, which is also hosted through ContractXchange.com.
Is Remote Recruitment Ready For Primetime?

Many of the present corporate users of ContractXchange.com have been very public about their approval of the site’s ease of use and the quality of applicant it attracts.
Testimonials from both hiring corporations and job seekers confirm that remote recruitment is now an entirely practical (and incomparably more economical) proposition.

Is it time for your contact center to consider remote agents and their remote recruitment? The easy first step is to go to ContractXchange.com and look around.

Considering Media Channel-Specific Hiring
By Tracey E. Schelmetic, Editorial Director, Customer Interaction Solutions
Let’s face it. Some of the best IT people you’ve ever had were less-than-suited for face-to-face contact. But it didn’t matter, did it? You weren’t deploying this person on sales calls. The only thing you had to worry about was the potential for future tech support via videoconferencing.

We no longer live in as face-to-face a world as we used to. Globally distributed business, plus technologies that eliminate the need for in-person meetings, have changed the requirements. Remember when you used to know your insurance agent personally? It was before insurance agents did customer service via telephone and Web sites. In the long run, it saves you money, since insurance companies don’t need to pay for homey offices for folksy insurance agents.
Customer service today is extremely channel-specific. You wouldn’t hire a person with no social skills to be an in-store sales rep, and you wouldn’t hire a slow typist with poor computer skills to be an e-mail and Web-chat-based agent. So why would you interview them in the wrong channels?

Your gut might say, “I want to meet these people in person,” but does it really gain you anything? Imagine that you have 10 positions to fill for telephone-based jobs. Do you honestly need to see those people in person? Or in the long run, are you wasting time, since people who are less-than-impressive in a person-to-person setting might make great phone agents. And people who wow you in person might be terrible on the phone. Given the high turnover in the call center and the amount of resource drain hiring and training takes, a smart company would consider it a waste of time to choose personnel based on channels in which those people won’t be working. And you might pass over great customer service workers all because you focused the wrong light on them.


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