Filling an open position can be an expensive process, with the Society for Human Resource Management estimating that it takes an average of 42 days and $4,000 to make a hire.
But that number pales compared to the potential costs of replacing a bad hire, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates at around 30% of an employee’s first-year salary. That makes finding the right Job Fit, or job suitability, one of the most important parts of the hiring process.
Finding the right person for your call center sales job is not easy. Unlike many positions in the modern economy, sales jobs tend to focus on soft skills, like listening and negotiation. But while soft skills are certainly important for these positions, a sales representative in a call center also needs a solid grounding in hard skills.
At eSkill, you can easily integrate sales skills assessment testing into your hiring process, helping you identify the top candidates without wasting time sorting through endless applications.
With eSkill’s easy-to-use testing software, it is easier than ever to evaluate candidate suitability for your open call center sales positions, ensuring your talent has the hard and soft skills they need to succeed in these competitive jobs.
How eSkill’s Sales Skills Tests Work
With eSkill, making skills testing a part of your company’s hiring process is straightforward. Their Pre-Employment Assessment Platform gives you access to a library of more than 800 skills tests, sorted by both jobs and by subject. However, what sets eSkill apart is the ability to fully customize your skills tests to find the talent you need to succeed.
You can build your skills tests in multiple ways. For instance, you can combine numerous sales and call center skills tests, like the Customer Service and the Sales Representative, into a single skills test. Or you can pick and choose from the more than 1,600 validated questions in eSkill’s question bank to create a test that is precisely tuned to each specific job opening.
Administering your skills tests is easy, too. Your team can add eSkill’s Talent Assessment Platform quickly and simply to most ATS software, including Bullhorn. You can even set your software to email a test link to every applicant, and you can track who has and who has not completed the test, so you can avoid wasting time on applicants who do not take the process seriously.
Go In-Depth to Find Candidates Who Are Likely to Grow
Once your candidates have taken their sales skills assessment tests, you can begin the evaluation process. The eSkill testing dashboard gives you total control over how you view your candidate’s results. You can sort each test based on the overall outcome to provide quick insights into which applicants are serious candidates and which lack the basic skills they need to succeed in this position.
However, one of the major benefits of eSkill’s platform is going more in-depth into each candidate’s test results to see how they performed on each question. Because each question is labeled based on the level of expertise required, you can get a fuller picture of each candidate’s skill level.
If a candidate missed an easy question or two but seems to have a firm grasp on more complicated skills, you might decide to put them higher on your preference list.
Video Response Questions Give You Added Insight
One of the more powerful tools on the eSkill platform is creating video response questions as part of your sales and call center skills tests. These questions let the candidate record a video response to a question you pose, from how they would react in a particular situation to explaining a complicated part of their expected job.
These responses provide the opportunity to learn more about a candidate’s personality, including their communication skills and their problem-solving abilities. Your team can score each candidate’s response using criteria that you establish, and these examinations can be performed asynchronously, letting your team stick to your best schedule.
With remote work becoming more the norm — especially after the COVID-19 pandemic — video response questions can also show you who is best equipped to handle working from home. While it can be a struggle to interview and hire candidates remotely, skills testing can be a powerful tool to help you identify the candidates who are most likely to succeed under any circumstances.
When you combine video response questions with other hard and soft skills tests, you can create an accurate picture of each candidate’s skills profile, and that knowledge can help ensure that you make the right hire, which can save you time and money — and headaches.
Curious About Adding Sales Skills Tests to Your Hiring Process?
Learn how eSkill can help you find the best candidates for your call center sales positions before hiring. Request a demo today.