Candidate Pre-Screening

Headnote

How to Better Predict Contact Center Agent Success

Contact center representatives draw on an array of skills to achieve the level of customer engagement, call handling efficiency and revenue production companies expea, and most industry insiders recognize the inherent complexities of these jobs. Nevertheless, few contaa centers have incorporated candidate screening processes that accurately match applicants' core competencies with those of a high-performing, well-tenured representative. The primary obstacle inhibiting centers from identifying the most talented candidates is the disconnea between the jobs and the processes centers use to evaluate candidates' potential.

Organizations have used screening tools to align people and jobs for years with varying levels of success. The most common assessment - the employment interview - is one of the least accurate predictors of future performance. Many well designed and validated assessments improve the hiring process via indirect measurement, which means an assessment measures characteristics of a candidate (e.g., personality trait or numerical ability) that predict job performance in the absence of clear, unambiguous overlap with the job. The lack of overlap is one reason why these types of assessments often result in more error and, therefore, less accurate hiring decisions.

The more closely an assessment aligns with a jobs tasks and activities, the greater the likelihood it will predict post-hire performance. In contrast to the axiom that past behavior is the best predictor of future performance, which is often used to justify the use of a behavioral interview or bio-data questions, research unequivocally supports the superiority of assessments that measure a candidate's actual performance in lifelike settings (i.e., work simulations and work samples) over all other types of pre-hire assessments. Simulations predict future performance well because, more than any other type of assessment, they measure each candidates job-specific competencies direedy in a realistic, work-like setting. Thus, the best way to predict future job performance is to audition candidates using a...