Answering the call: Capital One taps technology to improve recruiting and retention of call center employees - Special Report - Capital One Financial Corp

HR Magazine, Oct, 2003 by Jim Romeo

Bob Tenzer, executive vice president of HR for Precision Response Corp. of Plantation, Fla., agrees. "The biggest obstacle to making automated recruitment and selection work for call center management is the culture change," says Tenzer, former director of HR and store operations for Neiman Marcus, a Dallas-based clothing and specialty items retailer. "Moving to automation can make managers feel they will have nothing to hang onto or refer to later. Sometimes in a fast-paced environment it is just easier to keep rushing through outdated processes because they have worked for so long. Add to that the concept that change is not easy for all people, and you can have a recipe for failure."

Integrating the Elements

Getting past cultural barriers is only half the battle. The company must also make the new technology fit into the old way of doing business.

Capital One executives had to consider how they could pull software, technology and packaged systems into a coherent solution, Schaffer says. "Because of the unique recruiting and selection processes at Capital One, the application is almost all custom development. However, we did integrate a purchased call center simulator and a legacy application tracking system."

Connecting custom and out-of-the-box systems was a challenge, adds Schaffer. "We had to write a complicated interface to incorporate this [simulation] technology in the middle of the recruiting and selection process while making the transition seamless to the candidate end-user."

Schaffer emphasizes the importance of having information technology (IT) professionals with business savvy and knowledge of the recruitment process. "Trying to integrate a highly flexible system with an inflexible one provided some integration challenges, however we have some of the best IT folks in the industry," she says.

Capital One executives continue to monitor and refine the process as they gather data, Watson says. "We have also transferred the findings from this process to exempt recruiting. We're currently using an exempt pre-screen that traces its roots to the call-center pre-screening process."

Online Resources

For more information about recruiting and technology, see the online version of this article at www.shrm.org/hrmagazine.>

RELATED ARTICLE:Hiring Capital One Call Center Employees
             In 1998                      Since 2001

The process involved an automated    The employee takes a quick test
phone screen followed by             on the phone and then takes
pre-screening paper and pencil       online tests at one of seven
testing. Candidates who made the     testing centers in topics such as
cut went on to a credit check,       numerical reasoning, followed by
behavioral interview and, if all     an interactive phone test online,
was acceptable, an offer.            then a live phone simulation.
                                     That is followed by an onsite
                                     phone interview. If all hurdles
                                     are cleared during this two-day
                                     process, the company immediately
                                     offers a job.

Time from Initial Contact to Offer:  Time from Initial Contact to
                                     Offer:

         22 days on average                  13.9 days on average

Source: Capital One Financial Corp.