Does Your Contact Center Have Personality?

"Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.”
-Miguel De Cervantes

It amazes me how often we focus on hiring for skills and experience forgetting that cultural fit is equally if not more important.

I recently visited with a client who relays calls for the hearing impaired and speech disabled. The Human Resources Director stated that “we don’t want people from the Verizon call center or any other sales environment.” He wasn't slamming Verizon Wireless or any other sales center but instead he was referring to the cultural fit. His best employees were those who focused on helping others instead of being highly competitive as you see in sales focused contact centers. This is important piece of understanding and crafting an accurate recruiting and hiring plan for your organization. For instance, in this case I would use a behavioral-based interview question that specifically highlighted the need for an empathic and helpful attitude.

• Rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how important helping others is to you?
(1 being not at all and 10 being very important)
• Provide me with a professional example of you helping others?
• What behaviors did you demonstrate? What was the outcome?

Of course you have to do much more than tailoring behavioral-based interview questions. Our comprehensive approach includes face-time with all stakeholders in the contact center with a strong focus on front line personnel, personality testing, cultural profile, and other unique tools.

As the Contact Center Practice Director for SOS Staffing Services I can speak to how important the right cultural fit is in hiring the right employee for our clients. In fact, we feel like this aspect is so important to hiring the right fit that over 50% of our discovery
process is spent on this aspect alone.

How do you find the right cultural fit? Are you using any type of personality test? If so, how much does the personality score alone factor into the hiring decision?

Until next time…talk don’t boil rice