Targeted Recruitment Strategy- What does it mean in a Contact Centre?
Recruiting for employees in the contact centre industry can prove to be very challenging. There is a limited pool of candidates, especially in markets that are saturated with inbound contact centres. Quite often you are competing on a fairly level playing field, in terms of wages and benefits. Employees will make a decision for employment based on several factors, the least of which appears to be wage. Most outsource contact centres in the market are generally providing comparable pay and benefits. Your key differentiator has to be flexibility, environment, and ease of access. The other key factor in hiring and retaining employees is your targeted recruitment strategy.
What does targeted recruitment mean in a contact centre environment? You hear the term used frequently, but it has a different meaning when recruiting for frontline staff for an outsource contact centre environment. In an outsource environment, each client has a different set of needs, skill sets and abilities. When developing a hiring profile and targeted recruitment strategy, the objective is to go where the people are. An example is if you are hiring a technical support representative for a gaming site or company, you take a different approach than if you are hiring for a catalogue retailer. Technical support representatives have a tendency to be more website based. Your advertisement needs to be heavier in that area. Success can also be found by advertising in gaming stores, gaming websites and groups. You take the advertisement to where the skill set is. It seems so straightforward but many companies use the same strategy for all recruitment.
Using a targeted recruitment strategy has many benefits. Your recruitment dollars are spent more wisely for one. There is nothing more frustrating then spending a large sum of money on an ad, and yielding only a handful of viable candidates. Your ROI is low, and the retention of those candidates tends to be poor. What I have found is that by taking a moment and thinking like your audience, figure out where they frequent, where they will see an ad, and what appeals to them your spend to hire is vastly improved. The second benefit is that you have happy employees that are providing the types of services that they enjoy. The third benefit is that your training dollars are better spent. Your learning curve is decreased if the employees coming in the door already have the natural aptitude and experience you are looking for. All of this seems obvious, but I am shocked at how many recruiters take the “drag net” approach to recruitment, rather than selecting the right “fishing hole”.
One market that seems to be hard to tap into are the people that work in retail stores. I first started in the contact centre industry years ago, when I told myself I could not work another Christmas and Boxing day on my feet dealing with the crowds. I found that my love of customer services, up sell ability and skills were directly transferrable to an inbound contact centre. I loved working in an office environment, my feet didn’t ache at the end of the day, and I was paid better and received benefits. The flexibility in schedule was perfect for attending University. What I find though, is that those people working in retail don’t always see the similarities. They appear to be fairly comfortable with the image of a retail store, and the biggest battle is to over come the negative stigma associated with a contact centre. It’s a huge resource that I would love to tap into, but the malls are very protective about allowing outside advertising and participation from outside companies in any of their in mall job fairs…
I would like to know if anyone has had success recruiting from the retail sector. Besides the usual newspaper ad, how would you crack into that fortress that is the “mall”…?
