Recently we wrote a whitepaper that outlines 8 steps for great contact center hiring. Over the next few weeks, we will break-out each of these steps.

Step 6: Create a proactive recruiting and sourcing strategy

A robust recruiting and sourcing strategy is another Best Practice utilized by organizations with lower attrition.

Unfortunately, many contact center organizations get caught in the turnover spiral. This means that high attrition forces constant hiring. Each week requires another new training class. Because the organization cannot recruit enough candidates into the top of the funnel, they reduce standards in the hiring process so they can deliver enough new hires into production. The relaxed standards result in the hiring of people with lower potential for success, which contributes further to the cycle of attrition.

Alternatively, organizations that utilize best practice recruiting and sourcing strategies typically:
(a) Generate more candidates from person-to-person and internet sources than from job fairs and newspaper ads. Research shows that candidates from those sources tend to have better retention.
(b) Hire people quickly – top candidates are off the market within 5 to 10 business days.
(c) Measure key milestones at each phase in the recruiting process.
(d) Track and analyze data comparing recruiting sources against retention results.
(e) Focus first on the recruiting strategy and second on a plan for how to execute that strategy

In earlier postings, we discussed:
Step 1: Understand and define the desired business
Step 2: Understand which performance metrics relate employee performance to achieving the desired business outcomes
Step 3: Understand and define the job families (call or contact types)
Step 4: Identify predictive assessments that evaluate job candidates on the important worker characteristics
Step 5: Validate the relationship between the hiring process and the business outcomes