21/01/2022
Gill Marchbank our CEO, was a recent guest on the CX Files Podcast, hosted by Mark Hillary, a world-renowned CX Commentator, author, and blogger. If you have yet to read part one of this blog series covering the podcast you can do so here.
Read on to discover more about ResQ and the career-building path team members of all levels are actively encouraged to embark upon. Gill shares how, as the company has grown, the recruitment model we follow has broken the traditional mould to allow a more composite-based approach, meaning all applicants have an opportunity to speak with us. This provides a great opportunity to talent spot different skillsets and allows prospective candidates to apply for a role that really suits them personally.
Mark: ’Do you have some sort of way of helping people to progress through the company then? So, you know, you can come in as an agent but there are all sorts of different paths of the company?’
Gill: ‘We actively encourage people to stay here and build a career. We have our building careers program and for this year alone, we have promoted 95 people internally into roles such as team leader, coaches, training, had quite a few going into IT support as well and we raise awareness through our career fair It’s something we launched pre-covid, where each department would have a stand, like something you would see at a recruitment fair I suppose, and people go and find out about those roles. You find these days account managers teams; people don’t know as much about them as they used to. Or what is it that a head of operations does, so those careers fairs are incredibly useful and following those people can sign up to the talent-spotting program and we would put them on a mentoring program and help them with the skills that they might need and that leads to our leadership preparation program, the LPP program which has helped a lot of those 95 people get promoted within our business'.
Mark: ‘Yeah, that’s interesting, and especially as you mentioned there about the importance of IT because clearly this industry is not just the agents on calls, there is self-service, automation, and all this technology around the contact centre. So, has the profile of the people and the skills that you look for changed since you started the business then?’
Gill: ‘I think that we still recruit the same profile of people in our business, particularly because we don’t do a lot of the self-service type of work. But we have changed the way we look, we don’t CV sift anymore, we ask people to fill out an online application form and every single person that applies for a job at ResQ will have a telephone interview, that’s just one of the big things that’s important to me is that we hire on attitude. If you’ve got the right attitude, you might not have any experience. You might have been a recent school leaver, you might have been a butcher, or a lorry driver or whatever, and you apply for a job I want to speak to you. The reason I say this, and people ask me why, well, I was a graduate, a university leaver, I wouldn’t have got hired if someone had sifted my cv and I think it’s really important that everyone has an opportunity to have a conversation regardless of their results at school, or A-levels or whether they left university or whatever it might have been. So, we do composite-based interviewing, not skills-based interviewing, because I back my team to give them the skills and knowledge that they would need once they start here, if their attitude is right, they can come here. So that’s a big change we made about two years ago’.
Mark: ‘I was just going to say that that is interesting because I have seen that across this industry, less of a focus on the generic customer service background and more of a focus on competence, or skills, or experience in a certain area, I mean does that mean if you’ve got a contract with a fast fashion company or a gaming company, you could go through and look at all of your applicants and say ‘well who’s interested in gaming here, let’s give them a call’, you know?’
Gill: ‘We could do that, we do try really hard to build up a talent bank of people, at peak we have had about 400 people in the talent bank looking for employment, obviously as everybody else our talent bank isn’t as healthy at the moment as it has been, but we are building it back up. We have got around 100 people looking for work and we know what they want to do and what we think they might be best suited, but what I think is sometimes people think they might be best suited for a particular role, but actually we can guide them and say ‘I think you’d be really good in this area, some people aren’t as confident as they could be and maybe don’t think they could do sales, maybe think they can only do service. But actually, they get into the sales roles, and they do extremely well, so we try to unpick the core talents of people as well’.
From the very first point of contact our recruitment process uses an adaptable model whereby applicants will be made aware of roles that are available that our talent managers and recruitment team believe will suit them best. This process is carried on throughout an employee’s working life with ResQ, with an internal talent management team, careers fair and our ‘All Hands Program’ ensuring that employee progression is available to all who wish to progress within the company. This model is a perfect fit to allow us to meet our different clients’ varying needs and to deliver world class service on their behalf, with teams of eloquently sourced and highly-skilled individuals.
Part three of this CX Files Podcast blog series will be available to read very soon. The third blog gives an insight into the hybrid way of working adopted during the pandemic and further explores the future plans of the company to provide its employees with a more flexible way of working. If you simply cannot wait, follow the below link to listen to the CX Files Podcast!
If you feel inspired after learning more from our CEO about ResQ and feel you would love to delve further or experience our company culture first-hand, please contact us here.