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Call Center Recruitment Challenges

Written by

Lily Yuan

Reviewed by

VidCruiter Editorial Team

Last Modified

Feb 5, 2025
Call center

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More organizations are leveraging recruitment software to quickly fill positions within their call centers, especially in the wake of AI. Hiring call center representatives—telemarketers, customer service reps, or tech support agents—can seem like an endless task due to the industry's increasingly high turnover rates.

Call center recruitment challenges

Call Centers Have High Turnover Rates

Call center employees can be prone to job hopping, so how do recruiters keep up with the workload of constantly needing to fill vacant positions with the best talent? A well-rounded recruitment marketing plan and software stack helps you simplify the process to build an extensive database of qualified candidates.

In some cases, the vetting process is compromised for the sake of filling open positions quicker. In these instances, companies often incur losses that could have been easily avoided by optimizing their hiring.

Audio interviewing system enables you to efficiently phone screen call center reps while avoiding spending any additional time with unqualified applicants. Get your phone interviews done automatically and reduce turnover by hiring the right representatives.

At the end of the day, the number one reason a new employee doesn’t work out is that they never should have been hired in the first place. To hire the right candidates, make sure you screen out less qualified applicants early.

Finding High Quality Contact Center Agents

To hire the best call center agents, you need to look beyond the resume, but it's inefficient to interview all your candidates individually, especially in the early stages of the recruitment process.

Unless you dedicate a significant amount of time to interviewing every prospective contact center representative who comes across your desk, you are left to rely heavily on a candidate’s resume alone.

There are certain essential communication and interpersonal skills required to be a successful contact center representative. For example, pronunciation, speech and voice quality, and writing skills (for email responses).

Green checkmark Solution

Use audio interviewing and digital assessments to efficiently gauge your applicant’s communication skills.

Audio interviews allow you to measure and evaluate skills that simply cannot be read on a resume. Hiring platforms like VidCruiter enable you to automate the entire process so you don’t have to spend countless hours manually telephone-screening each applicant.

With email, live chat and social media customer service becoming more prevalent, it’s even harder to find good call center reps.

Digital skills testing and assessments come into play as hiring teams now have to ensure they’re hiring people who can easily multitask between two functions.

Embrace pre-recorded video interviews to gain more well-rounded insights into candidates. Let the software ask your best contact center interview questions for you, and review the responses at your convenience. 

Nowadays you need someone who is not only good over the phone, but someone who is also good in writing. [For] social media customer service, you need someone who is even more skilled…in a one-on-one conversation…that could potentially be viewed by thousands of people.

Scheduling Interviews for Large Call Centers

Recruitment teams in contact centers often opt for group interviews in the early stages of the hiring process, as it’s a more efficient way in screening high volumes of applicants in a time-sensitive manner. However, without the proper tools, coordinating schedules for a large group of individuals can be challenging.

Green checkmark Solution

Leverage an interview scheduling tool to share your available timeslots with your prospective customer care representatives and allow them to self-schedule at a time that's convenient.

Save yourself the hassle of coordinating schedules with all your applicants separately. Automated scheduling tools will integrate with your work calendar and enable you to preset your availability and have candidates choose the time that works best for them.

Whether it’s a group interview, a panel interview, a live video conference or an in-person interview, automated scheduling makes it easy to set meeting times and ensure everyone is kept in the loop.

Tracking Top Performers with Multiple Reviewers During the Call Center Interview Process

Once you’ve interviewed a group of people, how do you keep track of who the standouts were? Unless your memory and note taking skills are perfect, it’s hard to keep a record of who your top contenders were and how they might perform on the phone.

Trying to decipher your notes to a colleague for a second opinion on a particular rep is not the most productive way to get things done.

Green checkmark Solution

The ability to share recorded audio clips makes collaboration easier amongst call center hiring teams.

Having trouble sifting through your meeting notes or remembering what an applicant said in an interview? The best audio interviewing platforms allow you to save recordings of candidates' responses in the back end, so you can easily go back and listen to them as needed.

Need a second opinion? Share the interviews with other hiring managers and have them weigh in and rate some of your top contenders.

Tracking top performers

Outsourcing Offshore Contact Centers 

Experiencing difficulties recruiting for your at-home call center? Imagine what happens when you have to staff an entire offshore call center thousands of miles away.

Beyond the obvious time zone differences that pose their own set of problems, you need to put mechanisms in place to make sure your team is vetting these potential representatives properly.

Green checkmark Solution

Leverage recruitment software to eliminate travel costs when hiring agents for your overseas contact center.

Are you planning on building your offshore call center workforce or adding a team of overseas remote agents to your roster? A digital interviewing platform is the best way to meet with your applicants, regardless of location, and assess their technical skills.

Whether they complete a pre-recorded video interviewing or they join a live video conference from any device, the system enables you to effectively and efficiently gauge their level of expertise without even having to step out of your own office.

Do You Have More Concerns About Using Audio Interviewing?

Audio interviewing

Despite the obvious time-saving benefits of automated audio interviews, the idea of a “bot” conducting interviews on your behalf can make it seem as though the human aspect of recruiting is removed, thus rendering the process overly impersonal.

Remember, automated audio interviews do not necessarily need to replace your telephone or in-person interviews altogether; this tool mainly helps improve the efficiency of the initial screening and qualifying stages.

Final interviews are still best conducted in-person or by video interviewing before an actual hiring decision is made. The general idea is to have the ability to hear their voice before even looking at their resumes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the biggest challenges in call center recruitment?

Call centers experience high turnover, making it a constant challenge to recruit and find candidates with the right skill set and cultural fit. They often require staff to work in shifts, which can be difficult for some candidates to accommodate.

How can recruiters improve the quality of candidates for call center roles?

Recruiters can improve the quality of candidates for call center roles through targeted job descriptions, a structured interview process, and by broadening their recruitment channels to reach a wider pool of talent.

How can employers keep call center agents engaged and motivated?

Employers can keep call center agents motivated through recognition and rewards, opportunities for professional development, and flexible schedules or remote work options.

Why is it important to ensure diversity and inclusion in call center recruitment efforts?

It’s critical to keep diversity and inclusion efforts in mind with call center recruitment for improved customer experience, broader perspectives, and a wider talent pool.