Hiring the Best Contact Center Agents through Candidate Experience

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Hiring the best contact center agent is getting more complex with each passing year. As more interaction channels enter the contact center, the interactions agents need to support are more challenging and require higher skill sets. To obtain higher skilled candidates, contact centers must focus on the candidate experience.

Watch Tim Kennedy of Shaker with Jim Rembach on Contact Center Candidate Experience. Click to Tweet

Recruiting reputation and candidate experience

“When it comes to recruiting, the importance of providing a good candidate experience during the application process is often understated,” says John Feldman of ERE Media. “In today’s hyper-connected world where airing one’s grievances and frustrations with the application and interview process is as simple as posting a Glassdoor review, recruiters can’t expect to attract quality candidates without a good candidate experience.”

Quickly finding mutual fit

According to the Great Place to Work Institute, great workplaces are built through the day-to-day relationships that employees experience, and that starts with the initial candidate experience.

Finding fit quickly for the candidate and contact center is paramount. A quick “no” is much more satisfying than a long drawn out search for fit that inevitably ends in no.

Finding fit quickly for the candidate and contact center is paramount. Click to Tweet

During the ICMI Contact Center Expo, Tim Kennedy was demonstrating Shaker’s VJT (Virtual Job Tryout) technology, which uses HireScience™ to help employers identify best-fit candidates more effectively.

And with the simulation design, VJT provides candidates with an enhanced experience through a realistic preview of the job, the hiring organization, and its culture.

About Shaker

Shaker’s Virtual Job Tryout® (VJT) technology uses HireScience™, enabling recruiters to combine the best of predictive analytics and human judgment. Recruiters identify best-fit candidates with more precision, increase new-hire retention, and improve quality of hire. VJT technology delivers pre-employment assessments as day-in-the-life experiences that educate and engage while obtaining a work sample that predicts job fit and competencies critical for success. VJT technology is available in Standard and Enterprise (custom) configurations. It has been deployed in most industries for entry-level to mid-management positions. More information can be found at shakercg.com.

Get efficient with hiring

The applicant screening process that so many contact centers use is terribly inefficient. Too much time is spent on going through candidates that often times are not even close to being a good fit.

The applicant screening process that so many contact centers use is terribly inefficient. Click to Tweet

Recruiters cannot afford to spend precious energy and resources on futile efforts. They need to make sure the good ones don’t slip away. By being able to stack rank order, recruiters can work with their number one prospective candidates and invest time and effort where their best opportunity and potential is…faster.

Getting the Best Candidates

Desired contact center agent candidates have more options to choose from. As you make offers to your best candidates, so are several other contact centers.

Recruiting the best contact center agents is hard. It’s a fierce and very expensive competition that for most delivers a very low return on investment.

Today’s candidates are also much more sophisticated and technology-enabled than ever before. Their user experience standards are high, largely influenced by their time spent shopping, consuming media and managing their lives online.

CEB recommends that organizations must ensure that candidates’ application and assessment experience reduces candidates’ frustration by:

  • Clearly stating what will be asked of them and why, how much time they should budget, and what they will get out of it
  • Helping the candidate make an informed decision about the level of effort they should commit and their fit for the job and organization
  • Understanding the stages in the candidate’s journey and keeping the candidate up to date on their progress and next steps

As contact centers strive to make improvements in the candidate experience, those who seek candidate feedback and convert it to improving the entire process will win.

Contact centers with the best candidate experience will get the best agents. Click to Tweet

They will win by reducing their costs and finding best fit with the best contact center agents that are less likely to leave and more likely to perform higher.

Are you Ready for a Tryout?

There is a large number of organizations that provide candidate selection and screening solutions. But few are focused on the candidate experience.

If you want to differentiate you contact center contact Tim at: tim.kennedy [at] shakercg.com.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jim Rembach
Jim Rembach is recognized as a Top 50 Thought Leader and CX Influencer. He's a certified Emotional Intelligence practitioner and host of the Fast Leader Show podcast and president of Call Center Coach, the world's only virtual blended learning academy for contact center supervisors and emerging supervisors. He’s a founding member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association’s CX Expert Panel, Advisory Board Member for Customer Value Creation International (CVCI), and Advisory Board Member for CX University.

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