Recently at the International Customer Service Association (ICSA) conference, Barbara Morrison, a Human Resources Director for Suddenlink Communications, and Jeff Furst, President and CEO of FurstPerson, presented a case study titled Separating Myth from Fact: Hiring for Peak Performance and Service. Based on this discussion, FurstPerson has summarized three key strategies that enable contact center hiring managers to separate myth from fact when developing and operating contact center hiring processes. Using Suddenlink Communications’ experience as our example, we will focus on proven strategies that separate myth from fact in contact center hiring.

Strategy 3: Create alignment around hiring

The first two strategies discussed rely on data-driven approaches to carefully define the job in specific, measurable competencies and then link the hiring process to performance data for a closed-loop model based on performance. The next strategy involves gaining alignment between HR/Recruiting, Training, and Operations around the job, hiring process, and retention strategies. When these functional areas have different objectives or understanding of the contact center job, the hiring model will be broken and ineffective.

One effective tactic is to take the job analysis results and use them to facilitate a discussion between Human Resources, Training, and Operations so that everyone can understand the job model and the organization has alignment around the hiring process and goals.

Summary

Creating a fact-based, data-driven hiring model can enable contact center organizations to reduce turnover and improve job performance because they have a clear understanding of the job, how candidates fit the job, and how their hiring process improves the overall business.

Suddenlink uses three strategies to define their hiring process:

1.  Clearly define and understand the job competencies using a data-driven job analysis process.
2.  Validate that the hiring process actually predicts job performance by linking candidate assessment scores to Suddenlink performance metrics.
3.  Align HR, Training, and Operations so that everyone understands the job model and hiring process.