You're starting a call center venture. How can you hire the best employees for success?

Administer the assessment to all candidates: To ensure fairness and consistency in the hiring process, it’s important to administer the assessment to all candidates who apply for the job. This helps to ensure that all candidates are evaluated using the same criteria, and helps to reduce the risk of bias in the hiring process. Use the assessment results to inform hiring decisions: Once the assessments have been administered, you can use the results to inform your hiring decisions. Look for candidates who scored well on the areas that are most important for success in the job, and consider their assessment results along with other factors such as experience, education, and references.

Defining roles with a level of flexibility in mind is a positive way to meet the rising challenges of a competitive job market. Consider you may have to change your payscale based on candidate qualifications, or meeting talented individuals may change how you view the roles that need to be filled at your company. Being able to communicate with transparency, and being open to adapting expectations to the market is a skill set worth honing.

Do your research on market rate salaries for the skills you are seeking, and keep in mind your perspective hires should be doing the same. Transparency should be the number one priority in attracting new talent, and there's no worse way to start a working relationship than being unclear about everyone's expectations.

Starting a call center venture is an exciting challenge! To hire the best employees, I would focus on creating a strong culture that values empathy, teamwork, and growth. I’d prioritize candidates with not just the right skills, but also a genuine passion for helping others. By investing in their development and fostering a supportive environment, you can build a team that is not only successful but also motivated to excel together.

Resumes are important, and will identify certain skills and abilities of how your potential employees organize and present themselves. However, with the rise of AI tools, this is a much simpler task for job seekers to accomplish. They should be applauded for efficiency and progressive thinking, but the most important factor in your hiring process should be in the interviews and references you check. People and conversations will help you glean more than what's on a resume.

Testing candidates in an interview is not ideal, but bringing to them problem solving questions that present real-life scenarios they may encounter can be helpful. This is a good opportunity to learn how they assess and approach a challenge, but also an opportunity to encourage or educate potential candidates.