Designing and piloting a new call centre recruitment process

Punch Taverns, the UK’s second largest pub company, is committed to the excellence of its Telecentre operation - a crucial, high-profile call centre environment which provides the first point of sales and service contact for its growing base of retailers. Informed Assessment was asked to review the Telecentre’s current recruitment processes and to make recommendations for improvements.

The first step was to undertake a thorough job analysis. This included fact finding sessions with a range of current incumbents, line managers, senior managers and trainers to identify the skills and qualities required to perform effectively in two distinct sales and service roles.

Following these sessions, role profiles were created and approved, and key competencies in each of the two roles were highlighted.

A complete recruitment process was designed to capture information on the most important competencies earlier in the new selection process. It utilised those more time consuming and costly exercises later in the process where they worked best - to provide more in depth assessment on those candidates which the business felt were more likely to have the qualities needed for effective performance.

A mix of off-the-shelf psychometric and tailored assessment exercises designed by Informed Assessment was used. Candidates would progress through a sequence of exercises - CV screen, telephone interview, psychometric ability tests, competency interview, psychometric personality questionnaire, keyboard exercise and a role play exercise, provided they met key criteria at particular stages.

The personality questionnaire was piloted using online administration on a range of current incumbents and the tests were also given to the same sample.

This piloting process highlighted the significant value that could be achieved by using ability tests early in the selection process, giving the potential to eliminate those individuals likely to be less effective in the role. In addition, a clear picture emerged of the personality characteristics which could differentiate effective from less effective performers. The other exercises were also reviewed to check the value they were adding to the selection process.

The final stage was to design and run training courses covering the structure of the new recruitment process; the administration and scoring of the exercises; and an appreciation of the information coming from the tests and the questionnaire, including how to integrate the ratings derived from the expert report outputs with the other exercises.

The training was highly participative and also involved managers in completing selected exercises and placed an emphasis on ensuring as consistent an approach as possible to their scoring.

 

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Ann Rennie, Head of Telecentre Operations for Punch Taverns, commented:

‘Feedback from the managers on the process itself and associated training has been particularly positive; early indications as to the effectiveness of our new selection procedures and the exercises themselves are very encouraging.’