Recruiting is Broken - Here’s How to Fix It

Amanda Quinn 0:00
Welcome to Build a Better BPO, the podcast where we help business process outsourcers break free from the one-size-fits-all approach and build stronger, more profitable businesses.

Milan Batinich 0:10
If you're a BPO leader looking to improve margins, reduce employee churn, and create long-term client relationships, you're in the right place.

Amanda Quinn 0:18
I'm Amanda Quinn, the principal at Quinn Growth Advisors. I help BPOs refine their positioning, market their expertise, and move beyond the outdated labor arbitrage model.

Milan Batinich 0:28
And I'm Milan Batinich, CEO of Milan Motivates. I help BPOs and CX leaders build stronger, happier teams by improving employee engagement and retention.

Amanda Quinn 0:38
Each episode will bring you insights, strategies, and real-world examples to help you stand out in the BPO space, attract better fit clients, and build a more sustainable business.

Milan Batinich 0:49
We're cutting through the noise with actionable takeaways. No fluff, no vague theories, just proven strategies from industry experts and BPO leaders who are making it happen.

Amanda Quinn 0:58
So if you're ready to build a better BPO, let's dive in. Today we're talking about recruiting because turnover is over 100% on average for BPOs. And so we wanted to address this head on. And so Milan, you're gratefully sharing your information. Would love to start today kicking off a little bit about what you think BPOs do wrong when it comes to recruiting.

Milan Batinich 1:41
Yeah, definitely. I think it really comes down to recruiting methodology. And I think that's a great place to start today, Amanda. So there's a big difference between active recruiting and passive recruiting. And a lot of times corporations, uh, corporate recruiting teams really take the passive recruiting approach, which is they get a job post built, they have an opening from the hiring manager, build out the job post, post it on say Indeed or you know, LinkedIn or wherever they need to post it. And then once it's posted, they sit and wait for people to apply. So it's the post and pray method. You post the job ad, and then you pray the right candidate applies. Typically, what happens in this method or this approach is you get a lot of people that apply, and then you need to be able to weed through a hundred plus applicants typically for a level one or tier one type of contact center role. The active recruiting method, which is the one that I recommend to everybody, is to proactively search out candidates for these types of roles. So, I mean, placing ads is still fine, but instead of placing ads, proactively seeking out talent through various groups on LinkedIn, through your own networks, through internal referrals. You know, there's been studies done that have shown that the highest retention for any contact center is people that were hired through referrals. So going out to your staff. And not only does that help with your internal retention of your contact center folks, it also of the ones you're hiring, it also helps with those that are already on the floor because now you're valuing their opinion, you're valuing who they believe would be a good fit to work at your organization, and so because of that, it just boosts your existing employee engagement. So being proactive, so taking an active approach, posting is fine, but really being able to go out and actively pursue candidates versus just waiting for them to apply. And you know, I know people that are watching this may think, yeah, but for that entry-level tier one agents may not have a LinkedIn profile. That's why I highly recommend using your network, your employees' networks, getting referrals from your employees, because if your employees are engaged and they love working there, then they're going to want to have their friends or family members working there too. And so that's the best way, a lot more effective way than just posting ads and praying that uh solid candidates that will buy into your culture and your organization and the job will come along.

Amanda Quinn 4:16
So it's kind of Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I would imagine that especially when you you get to more senior level roles or harder to find talent, that could be really beneficial. But what about for the BPO that's looking to bring on a class of a hundred people or a thousand people or a huge class? I mean, reaching out to network feels like that's not possible. How do you balance scale with this more bespoke approach?

Milan Batinich 4:39
Well, and I'm sure we'll do a training and learning development episode in the future, but BPOs, if you have a class of a hundred, stop it. Stop doing that. That's way too big of a class. Uh you're gonna lose a ton of folks for various reasons, but we won't get into that today. I mean, if you are doing a large ramp up or large hiring, then I would use both approaches, placing the ads where you need to place them, but then also utilizing the networks, it's a lot less expensive to pay referral bonuses to your existing staff to hire individuals than it will be to place ads and and to pay your recruitment team and your HR team the time it takes to interview and review all those resumes and interview all of those candidates. Because I mean if you have a class, say you have a class of 20 you need a hire, and you have 200 people apply. Well, now you're paying individuals to review 200 resumes to set up maybe a hundred phone screens, and then you're just going through this whole interview process. Whereas, you know, if Amanda, say you're an agent and you're a rock star on the floor, and you referred one of your friends to work there, was like, well, if Amanda's great at her job, she's probably knows a lot of people that would be great too. So let's bring those people in. I mean, it's definitely scalable as long as you have a highly engaged staff and you can get your highly engaged staff to be ambassadors of your organization to their friends, family, to people they know, to their community. So it's definitely scalable. I've seen BPOs, I've worked at a BPO where we were able to do that. We had to hire what 95 people in three weeks uh when COVID happened in 2020, and we were able to do that, and majority of those hires came through just asking our existing agent base, who do you know? You know, it was beginning of April, and by the third week of April of 2020, we needed to hire 95 work-from-home agents. So we placed the ads and did all of that, but majority of the hires and majority of the people that stayed long term were from internal referrals. So it's scalable, even you know, with those larger hiring ramps.

Amanda Quinn 6:41
Yeah, I think that's a good point that you made about the close rate, the higher rate of internally sourced candidates is significantly higher, it sounds like, than those who apply cold, who haven't heard of the company, who your HR team has to kind of filter through and interview. And so therefore the amount of work that's that is involved in screening out those candidates and interviewing them is a lot less. Is that right?

Milan Batinich 7:06
Right, yeah, exactly. And chances are if you're an agent and you're referring in one of your friends, you've already bragged about your organization to your friends and talked about what the type of work you do and why you enjoy the work that you do, why you're still at the company. Uh, so they already have a good sense of what the company culture is and how management treats the employees before coming in cold, versus somebody just mass applying to jobs on Indeed, and then they get a call, and then they don't even remember applying. Well, that happens a lot too, because you know they apply for a hundred jobs on Indeed, and then you call them up as a recruiter and say, Hey, you uh send me your resume. I'm interested in setting up a phone screen, and then it becomes who are you again? Like I've applied for a hundred jobs in the last two weeks. I uh I don't remember who you are or what the position was.

Amanda Quinn 7:51
So yeah, that makes a ton of sense. That makes a ton of sense. Okay, so leveraging your existing employees and to get those new candidates in the door. But let's just say that you have a morale problem or your existing employees aren't willing to kind of go to bat for you, or you're in that situation where you're like, we have a huge class we need to bring on that exceeds the capacity of our internal team, just facing off referrals. What advice do you have for actually sourcing talent?

Milan Batinich 8:18
Yeah, watch our first episode and improve your engagement. No. But if you don't have time to do that, because that's not a quick turnaround, that's not a sprint, it's more of a marathon. Then I think going with that approach of placing the job ads, getting the word out as quickly as possible, as much as possible, refreshing ads. You know, a lot of organizations will place an ad without updating job descriptions, they'll place an ad without making sure it's current and up to date. And then a lot of it is making the job ad compelling. So, you know, I have a recommendation, something that I've used for about the last decade, is splitting a job ad into three sections. Typically, the first third of the job ad is what's compelling. Like what's so awesome about working at your organization? Something to kind of pull the candidate in. Why would the candidate want to work there? Is it something about your culture? Is it something about uh your mission, your vision, how you help the community? That first third of the job ad should be something so compelling that it wants to make the person applying read through the rest of the job ad. So, why do they want to work for your organization? Don't make things up, use real things, but just make sure it's compelling to the reader. Um, then the middle third is you know the job description itself. Here's what you're gonna be doing on a day-to-day basis, here's what to expect in the job, and stuff like that. And then the bottom third is pay, benefits, perks. Um, you can put qualifications either in the middle third or the bottom third. Also, this is a huge one that so many organizations avoid, like the plague, and I really recommend you not avoid it. Put in the pay rate. A lot of especially BPOs, a lot we know a lot of BPOs um don't always pay maybe the air at average or above average rates for a specific geo, but put it in because otherwise you're just wasting so much time. If you know you're paying lower than the average pay rate for a tier one agent in your geo, and you're trying to hire a hundred people in the next month, put it in there. Otherwise, your recruiters are gonna be spinning their wheels when they get somebody on the phone and they're like, hey, your resume looks great. Here's the position I have. You know, what do you think? And they're like, Well, what's the pay? And then you tell them, and then the person, the candidate, is like, oh, well, I need at least X, and you're paying you. And that's just I can't live on that. I need a higher pay rate. Well, now the recruiter's taking all this time, reviewing the resume, setting up the phone interview, getting on the phone interview with them, and then it's like, well, could have saved a whole lot of time and had a lot less people apply had you been transparent with the pay rate. So I think that's a huge one, being transparent with the pay rate and having conversations with the candidates. Um I had a post, I don't know, a year or two ago. Uh, resumes are trash. I still believe that. You know, just go just hiring somebody or making a decision to interview somebody based on their resume. Probably 90% of the adult workforce was never trained on how to put together or write a resume. If the job doesn't require masterful writing skills, then don't judge them on a typo here or a typo there. Don't judge uh candidate just based on their resume, especially if it has nothing to do with the job. Um most people don't know how to put together a resume. So really make base decisions. If you want candidates to be hired and safe for the long term, based based on the conversations that you're having with them and the interviews. So I covered a whole lot there.

Amanda Quinn 11:46
Yeah, you went on. You wouldn't you didn't let me stop and ask you questions. Okay, so I'm gonna go back to the beginning. In terms of the post itself, your job ad, you want to start with your why. Why does your company exist? What's your mission? Why should a candidate want to come join your company?

Milan Batinich 12:00
Right.

Amanda Quinn 12:00
And if you don't have an easy answer to that, it sounds like that's another problem. So off-ramp to future episode about establishing your mission and making it compelling. Once you get past that, then it goes into the job specific requirements itself, what the candidate can expect, so that they can see themselves in the role and figure out if this is something that's of interest to them. And then lastly go into what the pay is, what the perks are, the benefits, more of the things that somebody might need to know about taking the job and whether it meets their needs to live and to be happy long term.

Milan Batinich 12:35
Right, definitely. Something I would add about that middle section, so the job requirements or like the job description itself, there's tons of AI tools out there. You can use ChatGPT. You can build it out using assessment tools. I know we talked about that in the first episode, a specific assessment tool PI, but using words that would really draw in the can't type of candidate that you want. So if you know that the position is going to be monotonous, the same type of call, call after call, day after day, then you don't want to be hiring people that need a lot of variety. So putting that in there, because then it'll it'll attract the right type of person. If I need I need a lot of variety, specifically for myself in my job. So if I read a job ad saying, you know, you're gonna be answering 70 calls per day, answering the same exact question 90% of the time for the next however many years that you will be employed or whatever it is, reading that it would turn me away immediately. Whereas somebody who has a very high attention to detail, they like stability and they need to be able to work in that type of environment, when they read that, they're gonna be drawn in. They're gonna be like, oh, this is exactly what I need. So in that middle part, being very specific because it's either gonna draw in or turn away. And I know a lot of companies are like, but we want as many candidates as possible. We need to hire a hundred, we don't want to turn anyone away. It's like, yeah, but you don't want to hire a hundred people like me or like Amanda that need the variety, and then as soon as training's done, you need to hire another hundred because you just lost the first hundred because they're like, oh my goodness, this is not what I really need or want in my life as my job, as my career.

Amanda Quinn 14:07
Yeah, it sounds like the the theme of what I'm hearing from you right now about this is being transparent and being realistic, is because it the hiding things from candidates, whether it's this is our mission, and then they come in and they see that mission is not nowhere near, those values are nowhere near held in by the company, and nobody ever talks about it other than on that one piece of paper, or having key parts of the job not disclosed during the process is just gonna lead to resentment, just gonna lead to turnover, and that in itself is gonna cause a loss of culture and impact the existing employees who are enjoying their time and enjoying their work. And so there's no benefit, there's no downside to being that transparent. You'll you're gonna find the candidates who your company appeals to and your role appeals to. Is that right?

Milan Batinich 14:57
Right, yeah. I've seen so many BPOs that they try so hard to sell a position to candidates because they need to hire so many people because their attrition is so high that they'll either leave information out or they'll oversell something that maybe seems too good to be true, so probably is. And then once the candidate gets in there, you know, it for the short term, it's great. Hey, we needed a hundred, we filled a hundred, wonderful, we filled our classes, we're good to go. But then you're just gonna keep doing the same thing over and over because out of those hundred, how many are gonna leave? Because what they were told during the interview or what was on the job description doesn't align with the day-to-day of what they're doing during their job.

Amanda Quinn 15:37
Yep, I think you're right. This is just creating an attrition problem. Maybe if I'm listening to you, if I'm a BPO and I have a high attrition, what I would be asking myself is am I being transparent and am I disclosing the right information during the recruitment process, during the interviewing process? Or is there a broader cultural thing that we need to address? So for BPOs with high attrition, it sounds like a really quick, easy thing to do is to ask yourself about your recruitment process, your interviewing process, and really ask whether you're disclosing the right information or if you're misleading candidates and bringing them in under false pretenses, false expectations of what the job will be, because that we know that is just gonna lead to long-term disengagement, and those employees are gonna go into a trip. And we can stem this bleeding right now by just making that one small change.

Milan Batinich 16:29
Yeah, it's like uh you want to build out your process the right way before you hire your next class or before you recruit your next class. It's like let's build the airplane, make sure it's all buttoned up and good, and then let's take off and fly the airplane. Let's not just build half the airplane, go down the runway, take off, and then your HR team, your recruitment team, whether it's internal or external, now they're trying to finish building the plane as you're in mid-air and then doesn't end well. So taking the time and effort to build it out now, before you hire, before you recruit your next class, makes the most sense versus trying to make changes right in the middle.

Amanda Quinn 17:09
Yep. We haven't even talked about the impact that all this attrition is gonna have on your client relationships. Getting this process buttoned up and cemented and really codified, and everyone feels good about it, is just gonna lead to overall longevity of your employees and better relationships with your clients.

Milan Batinich 17:28
You just brought up a huge point. Many BPOs eat the cost of training new classes because of internal or their own attrition. So then a lot of BPOs can't even bill or invoice those additional training classes to their clients because it's their own attrition problem. And so they're losing out on all of those training dollars, not being able to bill uh for those additional training classes because of the attrition.

Amanda Quinn 17:55
Oh, yeah, that's really that's a big margin. In a tight margin business, that's margin that you can't afford to lose. So I hope everyone that's listening takes note of that. Okay, I want to move on to interviewing. Milan, what are some recommendations you would give about the interviewing process?

Milan Batinich 18:10
Yeah, so make the interview a behavioral interview. And the way you do that is asking situational-based questions. So asking specific questions about how a candidate handles different situations. Like, I think as BPOs as a whole, as organizations as a whole, you need to get away from the questions of what's your three greatest strengths, what's your three greatest weaknesses? Explain uh a time you were reliable. Like, no, like, hey, tell me about a situation that you had with a customer where you needed to de-escalate them because they were very angry, or tell me about a time when maybe you were treated unfairly at work, and how did you overcome that? How were you treated unfairly? Because then you're getting it from their perspective, you know, and then you figure out like, okay, something that you view as minor as the interviewer, that can be viewed as major. So if you do end up hiring them, then understanding, like, hey, we need to make sure that the way we treat this employee or this candidate once they become an employee, uh, we need to make sure we treat them the way they need to be treated. But really asking those behavioral-based questions to figure out okay, how does somebody behave and react to specific or different scenarios versus you know, tell me your greatest strengths, you know, tell me your greatest weaknesses. Well, my greatest weakness is I'm a perfectionist, ha ha ha. Like, okay. Like what is a situation? So coming up with different situations that you see in your own contact centers or that your agents have dealt with themselves, asking those questions. And if you're recruiting tier one agents of customer support, and this is their first job out of high school, then making it about their life. You know, you can take a situation that happens in your contact center and make it tell me about a time that one of your friends was upset with you. How did you de-escalate them, or how did you help them calm down, or how did you how did you fix it? You did something wrong. How did you fix that between you and your friend, or between you and your family members? So making that more interview more behavioral-based or situation-based instead of you know, list out a bunch of things for me.

Amanda Quinn 20:17
Because then you're getting a better glimpse into how they would actually behave, how they would actually operate day to day, and like you said, what matters to them. When you're conducting these interviews, is there anything that the interviewer should be mindful of or look out for to signals that this person would be a good fit or a bad fit culturally?

Milan Batinich 20:38
I mean, it depends on the organization's culture. But uh if they say anything that would cause a red flag in terms of its opposite of what your organization's culture is, uh, or if it's opposite of how the contact center would handle a specific situation. Now, if it's a one-off, that could be coached. But if it's a type of interaction that's handled multiple times a day, every day, and that's a red flag, making sure that the person is better aligned. And and you can ask questions where you're figuring out, okay, maybe there's some behavioral misalignments between the person and the job. So asking them more behavioral questions around the misalignment to see if they can adapt to be more aligned with the role or with the organization, with the culture, uh, or specifically the job. Being specific for each candidate in the interview versus here's the ten questions we ask every single candidate. Now, does that take more time? I mean it can, but once you get it down, it's it's like the whole thing. Build the plane, and then you'll be fine once you take off.

Amanda Quinn 21:42
No, let's imagine that um a company is is recruiting somebody for like a tier one position or a bunch of a bunch of tier one agents. Do you have any recommendations about how they think about approaching that decision or how many people, you know, are they looking for candidates? That are filling that the requirements today, or they think will be able to graduate to tier two, to tier three. How do you think a company should think like more strategically about candidates? Yeah.

Milan Batinich 22:11
Yeah, awesome question. So typically my recommendation is that you'll want to recruit and hire about 80 to 85% of your placements, of your candidates, of your employees, for that position that you're recruiting for. So say, for instance, you're trying to hire 100 Tier 1 agents, so entry-level customer support, say, you want to hire 80 to 85 of those individuals specifically for that role. It seems like they'll be they'll be amazing at that specific role. And then the other 15 to 20% of your hires, you want to be looking at the future and looking at potential growth opportunities, whether it be quality assurance, training, team leads, supervisors, senior associates, management, you know, what whatever it might be. You want to be hiring people specifically for those roles. Now, it doesn't mean that every time you have a promotion, that 15 to 20% are the ones that will be promoted. Sometimes it'll be out of that pull of 80 to 85%. But you want to be always thinking about the future. Because if you hire a hundred tier one agents based on, I think these 100 would be amazing tier one agents, and maybe they are, and that's great. But then when you have an opening and as you grow for a supervisor role, then you go back and you're like, you know, they're all great as tier one agents, but I really can or can't identify somebody for like a supervisor role. Where if going into your tier one hiring, you're already thinking, okay, these 15 or 20 out of this hundred would be great as like a supervisor down the road or a trainer down the road, then you already have people kind of in the bullpen that are you know ready to come into the game when you need to. And I've seen it happen both ways, where part of the 80% gets promoted, part of the 20% gets promoted, but to strategically think and plan ahead so that way you're not like, oh great, I hired a hundred people, they're all great tier one agents, but I didn't hire anybody with the knowledge or skill set or personality or ability to move into this specific type of role. Say it's QA, like, oh no, now I need to how am I gonna promote from within? Because when we go back to organizational culture, it's very important to promote from within. Helps with engagement.

Amanda Quinn 24:27
Yeah, because it feels like this is probably a weird analogy, but it feels like being too blunt is almost like hiring being flat footed. It's gonna be hard for you as an organization to level up when you have gaps because you're your foot's flat on the ground, versus if you're a company that has decided that we want to hire all high potentials, we want people who are ready and eager for the next job. That might be like you're all you're on your toes, ready to sprint, but as a result, everybody's really unhappy now. Everyone's like, I want that next role, they're all jockeying for that promotion, and you have a lot of discontent. So finding that balance of like uh you're you're like somewhat getting on your toe. Generally, the the broader group is content where they are, some are ready to get going, um, or have the potential maybe to take that next step. But as an org kind of striking that balance.

Milan Batinich 25:18
Yeah, and that's a great point you bring up. You also don't want to hire a hundred people that all have the aspiration to be your next supervisor. Because yeah, then you'll have a lot of uh contentiousness and a lot of discontent people because they're like, Oh, I was hired with the anticipation that I was gonna be promoted in my first year. And then all a hundred are saying, Me too, me too.

Amanda Quinn 25:38
And then you have a lot of churn when people are like, they promised me this job and now I'm gonna leave. Yeah.

Amanda Quinn 25:44
Okay. Well, I think we're about at time today. I want to close it off. Anything else about recruiting, um, interviewing, the recruitment process that we should chat about today before we before we go?

Milan Batinich 25:55
No, the only thing I would add is make sure recruiting teams within BPOs, HR teams, you're still adhering to all of the HR regulations, policies, laws of state, country, and everything that we've that Amanda and I have talked about today, you can do while still easily staying within all of those laws. That's the only caveat. I don't want people to be like, I listened to this podcast, and now I can break the law because they recommended it. No.

Amanda Quinn 26:21
Let's make that a broad disclaimer. Please always adhere to your local laws. We do not advocate for law violations here. Uh well, thank you, Milan. Appreciate you taking the time today and walking through this. Thanks everyone for listening.