High turnover rates necessitate continual high volume recruiting for call centers in order to stay ahead. Recruiting the right people—the ones who will boost productivity, increase sales, and stick around longer—is critical.
Instead of only focusing on volume for call center recruiting, the quality of the people joining your team must also be a focus. Let’s look at 5 crucial keys for hiring the right people:
1. Know Your Numbers—Analyze market data and your current workforce to predict future behavior and make more efficient hiring decisions by focusing on:.
- Overall turnover rate—What is your internal turnover rate (call center workers moving to other internal positions) vs. external turnover rate (call center workers leaving the company)?
- Voluntary vs. involuntary turnover—How many workers leave by choice as compared to the rate of involuntary termination?
- Team turnover rates—Are there higher turnover rates in particular teams? Is there a specific type of call activity that employees find more difficult?
- Turnover costs—Consider cost-per-hire, time-to-fill, training costs, and lost productivity during the time the position remains unfilled.
- Turnover by cohort—Is there anything being done differently for particular groups that could positively or negatively impact turnover?
- Expected Activity Levels—Monitor expected activities such as call volume, time spent on phone, average wait time, voicemails, call-backs, and customer call frequency. These metrics help candidates form a realistic idea of what the job will be like and what they will be expected to do.
- Average Market Compensation—Knowledge of the labor market and competitors’ compensation rates will help you determine whether it’s worth paying employees more in order to reduce turnover rates.
As you examine these numbers, patterns will begin to emerge, showing when and where turnover is likely to happen and how you can attract the best candidates to fill open positions.
2. Assess Your Culture and Corporate Branding—Culture is very important for retention, especially for repetitious jobs. Employees who love their co-workers, enjoy cultural perks, and have a great boss will be more likely to stay at your organization. Cultural assessments help you identify and fix problem areas in your call center so that you can brand yourself as a desirable place to work. Goal completion incentives, friendly coworker competition, career path goals, and competitive pay and benefits help foster a positive company culture and improve retention.
3. Define Your Ideal Employee—Cultural assessments also help determine what kinds of employees achieve top performance. Biographical data, soft skills development, personality profiles, and employee value analysis all help create a picture that represents your ideal employee. Use this persona to recruit, screen, and interview and it will quickly become clear which candidates have the good communication skills, creativity, problem-solving skills, and even temperament needed for the job.
4. Implement Job Simulations During Screening—Job simulations are a great way to assess a candidate’s ability to perform necessary tasks. Not everyone will thrive in a call center environment, but job simulations are a valuable opportunity to identify potential high performers and avoid making a hiring decision you may regret.
5. Use Technology Effectively—Screening candidates will help identify those who don’t meet your qualifications or don’t have the necessary experience. During screening, follow these best practices:
- Employ several different assessment tools. Multiple assessments give you a comprehensive look at the candidate and his or her skills rather than relying on a single test.
- Apply data to drive decisions. The right data can screen for personality, general ability, and specific skills. You’ll also want to benchmark each candidate against the needs of your company.
- Utilize blind tests—Blind tests score candidates based on performance and help eliminate bias during the hiring process.
Successful high volume hiring requires a reliable pipeline of qualified candidates who can fill the open positions in your call center. RPO Recruitment firms like Hire Velocity give clients a competitive edge by partnering at each stage of the process to design a flexible, scalable recruiting solution that delivers top quality candidates when your company needs them.
