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Report: Webinar: White Paper: Product Alert: Product Update: In The Press:
Webinar: The Impact of Better Hires in Dollars and Sense
June 11, 2009 1:00pm – 2:00pm ET Talent Management Executive Forum June 18, 2009 Bethesda, MD CIPD Recruitment and Retention Conference 2009 June 18 - 19, 2009 Olympia, London Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) Annual Conference 2009 July 5 - 7, 2009 Celtic Manor, Newport, Wales 
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The Right Tool for the Job: Hire Better Agents Using Job-specific Assessment Solutions Ken Lahti, Ph.D. & Abby Miller, M.A. You wouldn’t hire a plumber to fix your car. Why not? Nothing against plumbers (indeed, what would we do without them?!), it’s just that the skill set required for success in fixing your car is probably pretty different from the skills one needs as a plumber. And all other things equal, you want somebody with the skills that match the job at hand, to maximize their chance for success. The same principle applies in contact centers. Inbound service roles are different from outbound sales roles which are different from technical support roles. Business retention specialists need to behave differently from other sales and service folks to be successful in handling the most difficult customer situations. Supervisor and team lead roles require decision-making and coaching skills that are not necessarily developed as agents. And at-home agent success requires many of the same skills as on-site contact center roles – plus additional competencies related to effective self-management in a remote work environment. We know that jobs are different, and therefore the ideal candidate profile should be different. Is it possible to tailor the hiring process to assess those key competencies that drive successful agent performance in a particular role? As we say in Minnesota – you betcha! What are Assessment Solutions? Assessment solutions are the current state-of-the-art in pre-employment testing. Better than traditional approaches like one-size-fits-all tests or do-it-yourself custom test batteries, the assessment solution approach keeps your business objectives front and center during the hiring process. In contrast with generic tests which are designed for a variety of uses across multiple jobs, assessment solutions are targeted towards specific jobs or job families and the performance metrics that matter most. Assessment solutions are groups of tests that have been assembled to predict on-the-job performance for specific jobs, based on extensive prior research into the key predictors of success in these jobs across multiple organizations. Assessment solutions combine the best of the best in predictive pre-employment testing content, including measures of both hard skills (e.g., data entry speed and accuracy) and soft skills (e.g., customer service), in just the right mix depending on the target job and the intended hiring process. They are designed to maximize predictiveness within a reasonable candidate testing time. The assessment solution approach is a relatively recent development in the world of pre-employment testing, made possible by at least two key trends. First, utilizing the internet for candidate testing has opened many exciting possibilities in testing, one of which is the ability for testing providers to easily create unique combinations of assessments or scales to fulfill particular hiring and assessment needs. No longer are hard-copy publication and distribution of test forms limiting factors on the speed with which hiring tools can be released, researched, and refined. The second trend is the accumulation of extensive research on the predictors of job success across multiple contact center roles. A combination of (1) centralized data warehousing of assessment data across multiple companies and industries, (2) ready availability of contact center employee performance metrics, and (3) strong ROI-focused research partnerships has resulted in detailed insights into the attributes and tests that predict who will be an effective contact center agent or supervisor. Science works by accumulating knowledge and producing an ever-improving understanding of the world, and the science of testing and contact center hiring has evolved dramatically in recent years. It is no longer necessary to design custom tools for every client organization; instead, the focus is on using off-the-shelf tests or components to assess for critical skills required no matter what company you work for, and to supplement these standard measures with custom work when needed. For example, an assessment solution for inbound customer service contact center agents would identify a candidate’s job readiness now and his or her performance potential for the future. This assessment solution would include things like tests of typing and computer skills, often measured in a simulation, as well as evaluations for behavioral traits that are often key drivers of performance, such as service orientation, loyalty, reliability, and patience – traits that are often much harder to determine. Both readiness and potential factors are important for predicting success, and assessment solutions provide focused (job-specific) yet holistic (multiple skills and test types) tools for measuring talent. What Does the Job Require? In order to design an assessment solution, it is critical to start with a good understanding of the job requirements. There are two elements to consider – the outcomes of interest and the employee behaviors that drive them. Once the test developer understands these key factors, metrics, and performance behaviors, they can go back to their research and select the tests, scales, or items that are most predictive of these based on past research. To get the most out of pre-employment testing and to ensure it produces the ROI you expect, test developers need to understand the desired business outcomes that are most important to contact centers. Metrics like reliability, customer service, revenue, quality, call handling time, SLA compliance, etc. that can be directly attributed to an individual employee are excellent starting points for assessment solution design. Once you know how your company measures success in these roles, the next step is to look at actual performance behaviors – what is it that employees actually do on the job, what decisions do they make that lead to better or worse business outcomes. From these performance behaviors, competencies can be distilled and used to describe the job and to differentiate roles from one another. For example, while success in an outbound sales role may require a high degree of something like “resilience” or confidence in the face of repeated rejection, that same competency may be much less important within tech support. Similarly, agents in inbound roles are often asked to up-sell while providing customer service. However, assessing and requiring high “sales drive” is probably not helpful here since the focus is first on service and secondarily on sales. Is It Really Worth It? There are several reasons why assessment solutions are a better approach for pre-employment evaluation of candidates’ readiness and potential for job success:
Companies with positions to fill are always looking for efficient and effective hiring processes. Assessment solutions are developed to maximize predictive power while minimizing the demands on busy recruiters, human resources representatives, and hiring managers. The assessment solutions have already been designed for the target job and are available off-the-shelf with little to no customization required. Companies can begin immediately testing applicants and feel confident that the skills and competencies being measured will predict success on the job. Hiring managers won’t be overwhelmed when they receive candidate reports because the information they receive is directly linked to the job and easily interpretable. Score reports for assessment solutions are typically designed such that the higher an applicant scores, the more likely it is they will be effective and stay in the role. Alternatively, applicants with lower scores will be less likely to thrive. Not only do assessment solutions make the hiring process more efficient, they also bring better prediction of performance and key business metrics. Because the test content used to create the assessment solutions has undergone extensive research, the ability to predict success on the job is ever increasing. The assessment solutions have already been shown to predict results for similar jobs in similar organizations. By consistently hiring the best candidates, organizations using assessment solutions have seen improvement in business results such as:
Even today when candidates are abundant, it can still be hard to secure top talent. To help ensure that high-quality applicants are not going to drop out of the hiring process and accept an offer from another organization, it is important to use job-related assessments that can make applicants feel like they are actually doing parts of the job. Simply giving a single generic test may leave applicants wondering what is the purpose of the testing and even questioning their interest in the position. Job-specific assessment solutions, though, are usually designed with a mix of item and test types – simulations, personality, situational judgment, experience questions – that are clearly related to common work-place events and situations. Applicants can easily understand the relevance of job-related questions and often receive a realistic job preview by completing the solution. Applicants may be asked about such things as what the most difficult part of working in a call center is or has been, whether or not they would enjoy answering calls all day, and what their level of comfort is with multi-tasking and working on repetitive tasks. Additionally, assessment solutions often contain high-fidelity simulations. Contact center simulations require applicants to listen to and respond to customer calls. They are scored on how accurately they can enter the information, how well they can navigate through multiple screens/systems, and how well they interact with the customer. The use of simulations provides the most realistic testing experience for applicants applying to contact center roles. It’s easy to see that job-specific assessment solutions are the right tool for the job. Just as you wouldn’t want a plumber – or a psychologist, for that matter – fixing your car, you wouldn’t necessarily want your star tech support agent making outbound sales calls or vice versa. The jobs require different skill sets. And measuring different skills means using different assessments, solutions designed specifically to predict the performance behaviors and business metrics you care about. Pre-employment testing is a quick and easy way to find out a lot of information about your applicants, and job-specific assessment solutions ensure that you are keying in on the best, most relevant information in the shortest amount of time.
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