AGENT RECRUITING AND SOURCING

Industry Content Supporter:
Samantha Hansen
Director of Workforce Development and Career Pathways
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthahansenleal

Continuously attracting qualified candidates is the single most significant recruiting challenge in contact centers today. Therefore, site selection is so critical.

Many hiring managers find themselves with a limited labor pool due to the small or a limited geographic area. This can be compounded by too much competition; too many other contact centers or too many in the same industry like insurance or mortgages.

Without a steady pipeline of candidates, the contact center suffers with long hold times, longer handle times, higher abandonment and thus poor customer satisfaction.

Choosing a site location that has the right education demographics and the depth and breadth of candidates is critical to long-term success. Or create an education plan to develop candidates in depressed or under educated area, BE a leader!

In competitive markets contact center candidates are on the market for an average of 10-15 days. The recruiting process can take 7-14 days to complete from the initial resume review to scheduling an interview, then another 7-21 days to complete background checks and prepare offers.

No wonder candidates have already taken other positions! While the recruiting process has come a long way with automating the steps, still more automation is required to speed up the process.

For example, resume screening, pre-employment screening, applicant communication, background checks, processing tax credit eligibility can reduce the time to hire if automated. Tweaking these processes to shave time off can make the different in landing top performers.

Glassdoor, Facebook and other social media channels are where people vent about employers. Are these comments hurting your recruiting efforts? Are these comments true?

While the disgruntled employee will sound off unfairly, you must be honest and look at how many of those comments are true and what is the company doing about them?

When candidates see one or two, they think that’s the disgruntled one, but when they see too many negative comments to count, that raises concern. Being prepared in an interview to answer candidates concerns about negative comments is just as critical as selling the candidate on the differentiation of your company. Clean up social media with positive comments.

The job posting is the single piece of advertising for attracting applicants. The job posting should scream why your contact center is the place to work. Write the posting from a “we” perspective.

What can “we” do together as partners versus what “you” can do for us? The latter sounds like applicants are just pawns. This one subtle change in pronoun can change they way applicants see your job, your contact center, your company. Top candidates want to know that their skills, knowledge and presence are valued. Show how you value them in your job posting.

Industry Content Supporter:
Samantha Hansen
Director of Workforce Development and Career Pathways
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthahansenleal

Is the bar set too high? Are recruiters complaining they can’t find quality candidates? Recruiters weed out potential top performers due to no experience. It’s not always about experience or what have they done. It’s about what they CAN DO!

Pre-employment assessments can provide the recruiter with candidates that fit the personality traits of your top performers. You can always assess skill level and intelligence, but what about traits? Are you looking for a patient person? It’s easy to teach the technical skills, like the computer systems. But, how to answer the phone, conflict resolution and other skills of the job, but what can’t be taught is just the right amount of assertiveness or conscientiousness that the agents need, or the right amount of energy.

Too little energy or slow pace yields low production, inefficiency and the tendency to get tired easily. How does that show up on a resume? It doesn’t, therefore pre-employment screenings that evaluate traits can help identify future top performers.

By broadening the definition of qualified candidates and focusing on what candidate’s capabilities and motivations are will net a larger pool of qualified candidates.