Do I Always Have to Be Recruiting?
Do I Always Have to Be Recruiting?
If you operate a large contact center or one with really high attrition, you are probably always recruiting. But for everyone else, there is a strong temptation to turn recruiting on and off like a light switch – on when you need people and off the rest of the time. Why should this be avoided?
There are two primary reasons why, regardless of size or circumstance, contact center managers and their HR counterparts should always be recruiting:
Employees often leave with little to no notice
If you aren’t always talking to candidates and reviewing resumes, odds are that at some point you are going to find yourself in an under-staffed situation. This is bad because it creates more stress on the remaining staff who have to work extra shifts or take on extra hours to fill the gap left by the departing employee. It also increases the chances that you’ll be paying out higher than expected amounts of overtime pay and no one likes to impact their bottom line. Always being in the market for talent also allows you to hire opportunistically – like when you come across someone really outstanding – and to build up a database of names that you’ve already screened when you do have an opening. Being able to make those first calls even before a job ad has been posted can shave off days in the hiring process.
Everyone needs to stay calibrated on what a successful candidate looks like
Face it, if you don’t interview regularly, you get rusty. This is normal and it doesn’t take much to keep your skills honed and your questions relevant.
“You should be in the interview room at least a couple of times each month”
By interviewing regularly you are also able to quickly detect changes in the local hiring market. Are recent college graduates from certain nearby schools showing more interest? Is a local competitor being mentioned in more interviews than previously? Are wages rising and your firm falling behind in its compensation packages?
So, What’s In It For Me?
Everyone in today’s workforce is really busy. With competing priorities, deadlines, and the inevitable fire drills that occur in most work weeks, it can be really hard to find or make the time to re-post the job ad, screen candidates, schedule interviews, meet with candidates, and then notify them of your decision. But, if you do make that investment, over the long-term your team will be stronger and you’ll begin to find that the regular cycle of under- and over-staffing that is common in most in-house contact centers starts to diminish.
If you’d like to learn more about how to develop and maintain an ongoing recruiting process for your contact center, please contact us. We’re always happy to chat, share our experiences and proven tips, and, if there’s a need, explore how we might be able to help.
