When it comes to volume hiring, relying solely on resumes can be a gamble. This is particularly true for entry-level positions where candidates often lack experience. Fortunately, virtual job tryouts offer a more effective solution.
Virtual job tryouts excel at screening candidates in volume hiring, especially during call center recruitment, significantly boosting candidate experience. This dual advantage makes them a win-win for both recruiters and candidates.
This practical guide will explore how to utilize virtual job tryouts for volume hiring. We will discuss what a virtual job tryout is and why it is so beneficial. Furthermore, we’ll consider case studies of companies implementing it in their recruitment strategies, providing you with real-world examples to guide your implementation.
Introduction to virtual job tryouts in contact center recruitment
A virtual job tryout, or VJT, is a candidate screening method that uses job simulations to provide a realistic experience of an open role. Recruiters use this technique to test candidates’ expertise by observing their performance in the simulation.
Virtual job tryouts use a predictive modeling method comprising test questions relevant to the open role. They also include problem-based case study questions focused on common challenges candidates might experience in the role. In essence, these tests allow the candidate to learn about the role while you learn about them.
Typically, virtual job tryouts are applicable in call center or BPO recruitment, which involves hiring many candidates to perform similar entry-level roles.
When hiring contact center representatives, it is crucial that you focus on evaluating both soft and hard skills, including their potential performance in handling core tasks like data entry or customer account restrictions. To do this, you can tailor the questions in your virtual job tryout to:
- Assess the candidates’ work style and behavior
- Test their customer management skills
- Check for effective communication skills
- Evaluate whether or not they have a lot of experience as a contact center representative
- Measure their knowledge of standard contact center equipment and software
Ultimately, this allows you to see each candidate’s potential to excel in the open role. As a result, you have access to enough information to help you make great hiring decisions.
Benefits of using virtual job tryouts for volume hiring
Applying virtual job tryouts in your call center recruitment offers numerous benefits that significantly improve your hiring process and post-hiring outcomes. In this section, we will describe some of these benefits.
1. Improved quality of hires
According to research from Zippia, a single bad hire costs about $14,900. Although it might seem unlikely, companies are often exposed to costly bad hires, especially those who utilize traditional screening methods like resume screening alone. The good news is that with virtual job tryouts, you won’t have to worry about the cost of bad hires.
By testing candidates based on real-life work scenarios, virtual job tryouts boost the accuracy of your candidate assessment technique. As a result, you can identify and hire candidates who would excel in the open roles based on their performance. This ultimately ensures you hire only qualified candidates.
2. Better candidate experience
With virtual job tryouts, candidates can get an idea of what the role they’re applying for entails, including its challenges, tasks, and duties. This immersive experience allows them to interact directly with the role, making it more engaging for the candidates.
Plus, candidates can complete the trial from anywhere, thus boosting your talent pool as you can screen and identify top candidates no matter the location.
3. Reduced recruitment bias
Virtual tryouts provide adequate data about candidates’ skills and how well they can apply them to solve common problems in the open role. This automatically removes the need to manually predict how well they’d perform if employed.
Instead, you can make informed hiring decisions based on their performance ranking on the virtual job tryouts. Ultimately, this reduces hiring bias and bolsters accurate candidate testing and recruitment.
4. Data-driven hiring
At the end of each virtual tryout, recruiters have adequate and organized candidate performance data, which they can use to make data-driven hiring decisions. This approach ensures you hire based on proven knowledge and skill rather than speculation or unproven experience.
With the data from virtual tryouts, companies can improve their hiring process and screening methods. This allows for continuous development and adaptation to new volume hiring trends in contact centers.
5. Scalability
With virtual job tryouts, you can screen up to hundreds of candidates simultaneously without compromising on the quality of your testing methods. This leaves room for scalability in recruitment. So whether you’re hiring 10 or 100 candidates, you can rest assured that each will receive an effective skill assessment.
6. Promote employee retention
According to PR Newswire, 39% of employees who have spent less than six months at a company plan to leave within the next year. This indicates poor employee retention in organizations, which is caused by many factors, of which employee burnout plays a major role.
In fact, recent research from Limeade showed that 40% of employees cited burnout as the top reason for employee turnover. As such, virtual tryouts allow potential employees to evaluate the job’s demands and culture and determine how favorable it is for them.
Of course, fair compensation, benefits, and opportunities for career development are critical for increasing employee retention. However, if employees have no idea of the amount of work required of them, their retention will be difficult, regardless of the benefits. Therefore, they are more likely to stay if the reality meets their expectations.
Implementing virtual job tryouts: Best practices
It’s easy to overlook vital things like recruitment compliance and regulations or validity when implementing virtual job tryouts. However, these factors are important because they play critical roles in ensuring recruitment efficiency.
In this section, we will describe some of these best practices for implementing virtual job tryouts in call center recruitment.
1. Define your needs beforehand
Your recruitment needs drive your hiring process. These needs determine the number of candidates you will assess and recruit, the software you will use, and how long the recruitment process will take.
As such, you must define your company’s needs before implementing a virtual job tryout. To do this, you can perform job analyses for the open roles to find out what skills you’re looking for.
2. Use an accessible and reliable job simulation platform
Choosing a job simulation platform is critical for implementing virtual job tryouts. The platform you select determines the features you would have access to and how easy it will be for you and the candidates to navigate.
With this in mind, you should always opt for an accessible platform such as Vervoe that ensures reliability and validity in testing.
With its real-world-based questions and job simulations, Vervoe can help you rank candidates based on their proven skills. This ensures accuracy in your screening, leading to the best results.
3. Ensure legal compliance
From candidate testing methods to background checks, you must ensure that every step of your call center recruitment is legally compliant. This means that your strategies must align with recruitment regulations, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
For example, the ADA laws prevent conscious and unconscious bias or discrimination against people with disabilities. So, applying them to your virtual job tryouts involves providing testing methods, such as platforms that support screen readers, which make the assessment process fair and accessible to everyone. In special cases, you can always contact the candidates for any accommodations they’d require to take the tryout.
Ensuring compliance in your recruitment prevents legal consequences like fines or lawsuits. It also ensures that your hiring process gives all the candidates an equal chance to attain the open role by showcasing their skills.
4. Integrate candidate data and insights with your onboarding
When you’re done with your hiring process, you should gather the data from the virtual job tryout, such as the candidate’s best skills, and integrate them with your onboarding process. This would help you know how much and in what areas candidates need training.
In doing so, you would save time and resources by only training your new hires on the required skills.
Case studies: Successful examples of virtual job tryouts in contact center hiring
Multiple companies utilize virtual job tryouts and job simulations to thoroughly test prospective contact center representatives and hire the best candidates. Check out the success stories below to see how these companies applied virtual job tryouts in their contact center recruitment.
1-800 Contacts
For 1-800 Contacts, identifying and verifying the right skills was a hassle, even though the company had incorporated basic skills assessments in its recruitment. In addition, the ranking system for candidates was generic, preventing the company from having a personalized view of what each candidate could do. Luckily, 1-800 Contacts found a more streamlined way to assess candidates adequately using Vervoe.
Vervoe, an AI-powered recruitment platform, offered its job simulation services as an efficient solution to the problem. With various text, video, and audio-based role-specific questions, Vervoe unlocked new benefits for 1-800 Contacts. Among other benefits, the company can now identify skill gaps, boost internal mobility, and focus on the best candidates.
Dentsu
Dentsu, one of the most prominent global advertising groups, needed a system to find skilled candidates for entry-level positions. With Vervoe, Dentsu addressed this issue by using a combination of question types to assess candidates properly.
Leveraging Vervoe’s realistic job previews and simulation features, Dentsu created a realistic experience for its candidates. This gave them an idea of the tasks they’d perform in the role they were applying for and allowed the company to measure candidates’ skills accurately.
Prosper Insurance
Prosper Insurance, a US-headquartered insurance company, sought to build a team of sales and customer service professionals. To do this, they needed to test candidates’ skills based on their performance in real-world scenarios. With Vervoe’s job simulation features, they achieved this goal.
Using real-world scenarios and problem-based questions, Vervoe empowered the company’s hiring managers to observe candidates’ skills firsthand. This has helped Prosper Insurance boost employee retention and foster a well-matched and motivated team.
Vervoe: The ideal choice for effective job simulation
Virtual job tryouts definitely have their perks, especially when you implement them correctly. However, knowing how to use a virtual job tryout might not be enough to hire efficiently. You still have to select a platform that caters to your needs and has excellent job simulation and pre-employment assessment features.
Vervoe, our AI-powered recruitment platform, uses reliable assessment questions and job simulations to measure candidate skills and rank their performance. This way, recruiters can see the highest-performing candidates at a glance and have access to valuable insights for review and analysis.
So, what are you waiting for? Schedule a demo with us today to start enjoying the benefits of virtual job tryouts.
