Call Center Management Featured Article
Social Media is the Front End of Call Center Recruiting and Hiring
While most business functions are familiar with the cost and time necessary to address workforce turnover, the contact center is in a particularly unenviable position. It’s not uncommon for contact centers to see annual turnover of 50 percent or more. In a climate of low unemployment, workers are often induced to switch jobs for 50 cents more per hour.
What this means is that call center management is in constant recruiting and hiring mode. Since using employment agencies is expensive, many call center managers are obliged to do the job themselves. They write up job descriptions and post a few ads on employment Web sites. Often, people who need a job but are not a good fit for a call center fill up the inbox. Smart contact center managers are increasingly turning to social media to better qualify candidates.
Social Media Lets Employers and Candidates Size Each Other Up
You use social media to stay in touch with friends and family. You may use it to job hunt. For call center management, it’s also a good source for hiring agents because it can help you identify and hire people best suited to working in a contact center and – just as importantly – it can help prospective employees understand whether they’re a good fit for your organization.
In a recent article for Customer Think, Expivia Interaction Marketing Group’s Thomas Laird noted that to attract the right candidates, you need a way to present your call center’s brand.
“If you are an internal contact center within a larger business, create your own Facebook (News - Alert) page,” he says. “This way, you can create a distinct brand and community for your call center, separating it from the company as a whole. This way, a potential employee can learn about your call center culture and values from your Facebook page, as well as learn about any fun activities or initiative your call center provides.”
Social Media: The Front End of Recruiting
Using Facebook and other popular social media apps, you can essentially pre-screen candidates by helping them understand in a less formal setting what the job would entail, and what type of workers would succeed. Similarly, you can get some clues from applicants’ profiles if they’d be a good fit. From this point, you can lead workers who seem like a good match to your company Web site for the formal application process.
You can post worker testimonials, customer testimonials, videos and news about your contact center, which will help candidates better understand your culture and the expectations of the job.
Laird notes that it’s not enough to simply have these social media channels: you have to use them.
“Being active is the only way to create engagement,” he wrote. “Respond to messages quickly, preferably by assigning an agent to keep it open on their monitor or go to an agent’s phone. This shows that you care about potential employees and customers.”
Edited by Erik Linask