The Universal Language of #recruitment

At Ubiquity Global Services, our two main contact centers are located on different continents almost 10,000 miles apart. Our employees speak different languages, have different cultures and experience different ways of life, but the one thing their workplaces have in common is the use of social media tools as a primary channel for recruiting new agents.

We know if contact centers want to find the top talent they need to be prepared to embrace the opportunities available through established and emerging social networks. Linkedin has grown rapidly and is a terrific resource for networking and job searching, but what about “passive” candidates that aren’t necessarily looking for a job? The ease of social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter make them an easy choice to post recruitment classifieds, but more importantly, these social media channels provide a great way to attract the best talent as they are a platform for possible candidates to know and understand your brand and culture, and therefore choose to work with you over the competition.

Many customer service agents are dissatisfied with the working conditions at traditional contact centers, and by providing a glimpse into our company’s culture through alternate social media channels we’ve been able to attract top talent to our organization.

This is especially important in regions where a number of competing companies exist.

Nathali Hidalgo, Ubiquity’s human resources manager in El Salvador stresses the importance social media sites play in the recruitment process at Ubiquity. “Other companies in (El Salvador) use expensive headhunter companies to attract new employees, but our reputation in the local market makes this unnecessary. Most importantly, it helps to celebrate and extend our company brand. We’ve found that a fun way of doing this help create content and create videos demonstrating the reasons why they enjoy working at Ubiquity. This also helps to promote deeper social ties within individual centers and with colleagues working on the other side of the world.”
 

While Ubiquity regularly uses social media to promote activities in both the Philippines and El Salvador, we see distinct differences in ways people choose to interact with the content. We’ve learned the importance of regularly maintaining our social media sites with specialists who understand the social media usage habits common to each contact center location.

So how do you use social media effectively in a global service center environment?

• Let your company personality shine through in social media tools. We know our staff have fun and enjoy their working environment, and that’s reflected in their social media posts. Employee-produced videos and photographs of company events bring your contact center culture to life.
• Design a distributed posting model. Instead of designating one person to manage all your social media posts, build a team to share responsibility for creating ongoing content. This approach distributes maintenance responsibilities according to location or functional specialization.
• Respond to requests and mentions in a timely manner. When your followers engage with you, make sure you interact in a way that creates discussion and dialogue, rather than closing down enquiries or questions. We’re keen to recruit agents who are mindful and questioning. We believe this is one source of innovation.

Social media is an evolving environment. We’re definitely still learning. But when we get responses from candidates who are really interested in who we are and what we stand for, we know we’re on the right track.