During the current economic crisis, which has continued to plague the marketplace and has resulted in a number of job losses across the country, it’s hard to believe there may be some benefits to the situation. However, in the call center, the recession is actually bringing more people knocking on HR offices' doors looking for employment. This increase makes it possible for those in charge of hiring in the call center to be more selective with their choices, and choose only candidates who best fit the job description.
A recent FurstPerson.com blog post notes that the recession actually presents an opportunity to lower turnover costs if centers move quickly to respond to this vast pool of candidates.
To ensure that they are capitalizing on this, call centers should be armed with the right hiring models including pre-employment screening and being familiar with retention and performance metrics.
A model of the incremental retention gains that can be achieved by increasing the selection ratio is pictured below.
As a greater pool of candidates makes it to call centers looking for employment, they now have an opportunity to hire employees who are likely to stay longer. In addition to greater choices with who to hire, it is important that call centers know whom they should be hiring and properly assess candidates based on competencies needed for the job.
In the blog post, the company also notes that their “research and practical experience deploying predictive pre-employment hiring solutions for call centers shows that when a call center organization can be more selective in the hiring process, the general result is lower turnover.”
The company’s 2008 Call Center Recruiting and Compensation Survey shows that the average cost of attrition per agent is $5,466.32. This means that in a 500 agent center with 50 percent attrition is losing $1.4 million per year in turnover costs.
FurstPerson helps call center’s with the hiring process through pre-employment screening solutions that simulate work conditions and measure performance of agents so they are able to pick only the most skilled, motivated employees and weed out unqualified applicants.
For more, be sure to check out the Call Center Hiring and Pre-employment Screening channels on TMCnet.
Related Articles:
FurstPerson Offers Insight Into Call Center Hiring and Attrition
Study Reveals Company Leaders Failing to Recognize Importance of Talent Management
Needed: A Contact Center Makeover?
FurstPerson Says Call Center Hiring Will Rise in 2009
Stefania Viscusi is an assignment editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Stefania’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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