Let Them Drive: Advice on New-Hire Evaluations

Debbie Biggs offers ideas on New-Hire Evaluations in a recent article on the ICMI Knowledge Center. She writes, "I'd like to see our learning assessments modeled more after the driver's exam." We agree! She then goes on to write: "Often, we rely exclusively on written tests to determine learner ability because written tests are easy to administer. But can a multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank or true/false question truly measure a person’s ability to perform the following skills?

• A call center representative calmly responding to an irate customer complaining about a charge on a bill.

We agree that written tests have limitations, although they can be effective at measuring other critical areas like work attitudes and work ability.

Debbie is describing the use of call center simulations. While we are partial to our CC Audition simulation, the marketplace does provide several simulation tools to consider.

Simulations offer a consistent, objective, interactive, and predictive method to evaluate job candidate competencies in computer ability, multi-tasking, general learning, stress tolerance, accuracy, and decision making. All in a realistic call center environment. Simulations avoid the labor cost and, in most cases, have been developed with scientific rigor that is defensible and correlates with job performance.