Jeff Furst — March 17, 2020 Drive Business Results by Using Multi-tasking Assessment Tests & Job Simulation in Hiring
When it comes to high-pressure, high-speed environments like customer service, tech support, or contact center roles, the ability to multitask simply cannot be understated.
For example, contact center representatives must navigate technology, key in data, and provide quality care to customers, and supervisors must handle escalated cases, juggle expectations of leadership, monitor agents, keep track of metrics, and drive results.
That’s a lot.
FurstPerson’s job analysis work tells us that multitasking ability is important, but what kind of business results can hiring individuals with better multi-tasking ability generate? Our experience has shown that adding the evaluation of a job candidate’s multi-tasking ability during the hiring process can help increase early stage retention and improve overall new hire job performance.
As was mentioned previously, the critical reasoning for this is that a new hire with adequate multi-tasking ability can focus on training, the caller, and problem resolution more clearly. New hires with lower multi-tasking ability fumble through training and just managing the call and computer system.
Multi-tasking Critical Performance Metrics
Multi-tasking has been linked with the following critical performance metrics:
3 Examples of How Businesses Can Benefit from a Multi-tasking Test during Candidate Selection
Specific examples help illustrate the payback that can be experienced by evaluating new hires high in multi-tasking ability compared to new hires low in multi-tasking ability. In all cases, new hires met the minimum requirements to perform the job. Below are three examples illustrating how multitasking can yield significant, positive business results.
Benefit 1: Insurance / Financial Services Organizations
For our first example, we examined agents working for an insurance and financial services organization. In this example, employees with multitasking abilities were head and shoulders above their peers, demonstrating:
- 13% better quality scores
- 9% better average handle time performance
- 14% better overall performance
Benefit 2: Communications Organization
There are fewer industries in which multitasking skills are more essential than the telecommunications industry. With high call volumes, hardware and software to navigate, and information to locate, it is imperative for agents to be able to handle several duties simultaneously while producing quality results. Through our research, we not only found that multitasking and productivity go hand-in-hand, but high ability multi-tasking employees had:
- 25% lower 30 day turnover
- 14% better calls per hour performance
- 11% better productivity performance
- 11% better performance ranking
Benefit 3: Outsourcing Firms
Multitasking isn’t just critical in handling customer service and support. The ability to multitask has also been found to help increase sales performance as well. Through research conducted with an outsourcing firm, we found high ability multi-tasking employees had
Finding Quality Reps with a Multitasking Ability Test
In short, job analysis findings tell us that multitasking ability is a critical competency to successful job performance in a contact center role.
But how can you ensure the representatives you hire have the skills necessary to drive the kinds of results above?
With improved technology that can simulate actually working in a call center, much like auditioning for a play or sports team, hiring managers can successfully measure the multitasking ability of job candidates. The end result is that organizations that can identify job candidates who have better multi-tasking ability and can hire them before the competition does can sustain better financial performance.
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