Any organization that deals with hiring individuals to fill specific positions deals with risk. There is no guarantee that any person hired for a particular position will fulfill the job as intended or that they will perform better than expected. There is also the very real possibility that the candidate could fail miserably and cause the company undue costs and problems.

 

In the contact center industry, there is a significant amount of training that is involved to ensure that the person hired to fill an agent position is able to complete the duties of the job. If the person hired ends up leaving the company shortly after starting, for whatever reason, the company must endure added cost to hire and train another new person.

 

It is this cost that makes hiring the right person the first time so important. The real challenge is – how do you ensure that you have hired the right person the first time? Ideally, it would provide great insight for the hiring manager to be able to see the candidate at work before hiring him. As this is often impossible, what is the next best thing?

 

A candidate’s work habits can still be analyzed before he or she is hired. FurstPerson offers a solution, AutoScreen Plus that enables the hiring manager to use biographical data assessment methodology to screen candidates quickly and effectively so that they can be moved onto the next stage in the hiring process, or eliminated from consideration.

This Web-based biographical data assessment tool reviews a person’s work habits by asking 50 questions that measure a person’s dependability, person-environment fit, computer use, resiliency, compliance-acquiescence, frustration tolerance, soft-sell persuasion, pace consistency, attention to detail and conscientiousness.

The candidate’s responses to these questions help to determine his or her attributes related to work. The application will measure average call handle time, call quality, sales offer rate, overall sales level, tenure and turnover potential in the candidate.

 

By going beyond standard screening to assess a candidate, the AutoScreen Plus provides immediate scoring to eliminate potentially poor hires from consideration. In doing so, the hiring manager is able to save considerable time and money by eliminating poor candidates early in the process.

While the implementation of such a solution will not guarantee that all risk is removed from the call center hiring process, it does help to improve the success rate of hiring individuals who can handle the job and produce strong results. Increasing the hiring of such individuals and eliminating weak candidates early in the process will only help to improve the bottom line.