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Productive Sourcing Strategies from 2009

Recently, FurstPerson published findings from our 2009 Contact Center Recruiting and Compensation Survey, which was completed by over a hundred contact center leaders from throughout North America. The benchmarks in this report allow contact centers to compare current practices against contact centers across the United States and Canada.  The results are intended to help guide best practices and enable contact centers to identify opportunities to improve their ability to find, hire, and keep the right talent. Five key findings from the survey were recently published in a research abstract. Over the next few postings, we will highlight several of these findings. 

Similar to the results from the 2008 survey, employee referrals produced the largest percentage of new hires (see Table) followed by national job boards, the company web site, and print ads. The least productive strategies were Radio/TV, community recruiting, college or other school recruiting, career services, and job fairs. Moreover, roughly 48% of participants indicated that they did not use these strategies.

As a case example, we recently discussed two strategies to help improve new hire recruiting. The organization profiled has focused on expanding its employee referral program and shifting internet based recruiting to better utilization of its company web site.

About the Survey Participants: A total of 101 contact center leaders from the United States and Canada completed the survey, although not all sections were completed. The majority of participants had direct profit and loss responsibility, with more than 65% holding a director or higher level position (e.g., VP, CEO, etc.). Approximately 87% of participants reported at least one year of experience, and approximately one-third reported five or more years of experience in contact center leadership roles.