The home agent model brings numerous benefits to organizations -- not the least of which are improved agent satisfaction and retention; better business continuity and redundancy; lower operating costs stemming from reduced facilities usage; a significantly reduced carbon footprint; and a vastly expanded pool of candidates from which to hire.

But not every call center job applicant is right for the home agent model. In general, companies want candidates who already have a certain amount of call center experience or a strong track record of working successfully independently in some other vocation – or at the very least a strong set of computer, verbal and customer service skills.

That means companies need to take a different approach to recruiting, screening and hiring these agents. Applicants to these positions need to really prove their skills -- and that means a different set of assessment tools is needed, compared to the standard tools used to assess “brick-and-mortar” agents.

This becomes all the more important when you consider that, with the home agent model, the entire nation, if not the entire world, becomes your hiring ground. In general, home-based call center agent help wanted ads draw many times more applicants – due to the wider geographic reach – and this means companies have the luxury of selecting candidates that are on the higher end of the performance curve.

As pointed out in a new, free white paper from call center hiring solutions provider FurstPerson, a “traditional” brick and mortar selection ratio might be three candidates for every one hire -- and a “best practice” brick and mortar model might be 10 candidates for every one hire -- but most home agent models run 15 candidates (or more) for every 1 hire. That means companies can (and should) use stricter criteria for measuring a candidate’s skill level for a home agent position.

Another factor that is critically important to consider is security. Despite the claims of contact center technology vendors who say they have the security issue mostly “licked,” home-based agents still cannot be monitored to the same level as agents in a brick-and-mortar facility. There’s really nothing to stop a home-based agent from, for example, jotting down a customer’s credit card number and social security number on sticky pad right next to their computer. Thus the evaluation and assessment process also needs to measure a candidate’s honesty and integrity.

FurstPerson’s free white paper, “Are Home Agent Job Candidates Better?” reviews common home agent labor models; the operational benefits of the home agent model; and data comparing brick and mortar candidates to home agent candidates.

The white paper finds that while many home agent organizations claim that they are able to attract more mature candidates with longer work histories, these types of demographic characteristics do not necessarily predict job performance as well as specific, job-related competencies in the areas of work ability, work skills and work attitudes.

So do home agent candidates really perform “better” than brick and mortar candidates on assessments designed to measure those key competencies that relate to job success? To learn the answer to this interesting question, you’ll just have to download the free white paper by clicking here.