CAREER ADVISOR

In this issue, the “Career Advisor” is responding to: “ how do I switch from Office Manager to an HR role ? and is it advisable ?”. All reasonable questions related to careers, skill development or employment related issues – sent to advisor@skill-link.com - would be addressed in this section every week.

Q: Why do I find recruiting and retaining the right people so difficult ?

I am the recruitment manager of a large ‘call center’. My company serves local clients in Egypt in addition to providing offshore services, in other words acting as a ‘call center’ for clients in other countries. Therefore our Customer Service Representatives, of ‘Agents’ as we call them, would be handling calls from those living in the countries we serve in Europe and North America.

I find it very challenging to recruit the right people, additionally the staff turn over is higher than what I thought it would be. Is this case just for us ? and what can be done about it ?

M. F. (Cairo)

Replying:

Dear Mr. F.

The ‘call center’ or ‘contact center’ industry is relatively new in Egypt. Specially, when it comes to serving offshore clients. India, South Africa and other countries have been pioneering, and to date, more successful in this field.

It is true that filling ‘contact center’ agent positions is not easy, also retention is a challenge. This is not only for Egypt, but a global concern.

The following summarizes the reasons for such a challenge, specially for offshore ‘agents’ serving international clients thousands of miles away:

(1) Attractiveness of the position:

• the fact that the vacancies are not for regular office hour jobs (9 – 5), but rather oriented towards evening and dawn shifts – very unsocial hours (to cater for the time difference with other countries being served), turns away numerous potentially suitable candidates. Specially, female candidates, who traditionally are more inclined to such jobs.

• The nature of the job (regardless of the job title), that of a ‘contact center agent’, does not suit a significant percentage of potential candidates who have aspirations for more ambitious careers, this is a problem faced by the industry worldwide and not restricted to Egypt. It is unfortunate, that this more ambitious group is usually the one with advanced communication skills and relatively better foreign language fluency.

(2) Selectivity:

• It is obvious that language capabilities (specially verbal ones) are a key selection criteria… hence a significant number of interested candidates are turned down because of not meeting the pre set standards.

(3) Turn over:

• By all international standards, the contact sector industry has a high turnover, this is particularly apparent in front line contact agents. They just get bored of the job after a while, and they see few advancement opportunities.

Unfortunately, there is no magic solution to your problem. What you need is a nice work environment, an attractive compensation package, provide benefits and services (eg. Transportation, staff outings etc..) and to continuously recruit and train new staff. This is a cost of doing business, that you will have to factor in your service pricing.

We hope the above was of some use to you.

Good Luck
 

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