Many helpdesk and service desk managers will related their horrors in recruiting suitable candidates for their operations. Resumes and online recruitment information does not justify the candidates suitability to serve over the telephone. There were too many times when I’m let down by the candidates speech, comprehension and professionalism although they had very commendable academic achievements. Too many hours were spent rejecting candidates instead of taking care of my operations.
Every time I run a recruitment drive, I get a minimum of 400 candidates applying. In order to streamline and improve my recruitment exercise, I’ll get my assistant manager to filter the applicants based on pre-agreed factors (more on this later). From the filtered candidates, I’ll past the list to my senior analyst to make a personal phone call and perform a quick interview to check on speech capabilities. The list of candidates that pass this stage will then be forwarded to me for a final face-to-face interview. This process alone has shorten my traditional method of recruitment duration by half.
Nowadays, I’m trying a different approach; reversing the above method. In my recruiment advertisement, I list a telephone number for the interested candidates to phone in and leave a message. In their message, they must speak clearly, providing their names and contact numbers as well as a short reasoning why they are applying for the job. At the end of every day, my senior analyst will listen to the recordings and forward me the list of candidates that pass the speech test. So far, this method takes more of less the same time as my earlier methodology.
If you have some creative ways of recruiting helpdesk professionals, do share it here.
Cheers,
Amos