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When the Hiring Boss Is an Algorithm
Hugh Pickens writes "Joseph Walker writes at the WSJ that although personality tests have a long history in hiring, sophisticated software has now made it possible to evaluate more candidates, amass more data and peer more deeply into applicants' personal lives and interests. This allows employers to predict specific outcomes, such as whether a prospective hire will quit too soon, file disability claims, or steal. For example after a half-year trial that cut attrition by a fifth, Xerox now leaves all hiring for its 48,700 call-center jobs to software. Xerox used to pay lots of attention to applicants who had done the job before. Then, an algorithm told the company that experience doesn't matter. It determined what does matter in a good call-center worker — one who won't quit before the company recoups its $5,000 investment in training. By putting applicants through a battery of tests and then tracking their job performance, Evolv has developed a model for the ideal call-center worker (PDF). The data recommend a person who lives near the job, has reliable transportation and uses one or more social networks, but not more than four. He or she tends not to be overly inquisitive or empathetic, but is creative. 'Some of the assumptions we had weren't valid,' says Connie Harvey, Xerox's chief operating officer of commercial services. However, data-based hiring can expose companies to legal risk. Practices that even unintentionally filter out older or minority applicants can be illegal under federal equal opportunity laws. If a hiring practice is challenged in court as discriminatory, a company must show the criteria it is using are proven to predict success in the job."
japanese workers cost a fraction of what US workers are paid?...
Low self esteem? Ideal employee.
apparently they are smart enough to know call center jobs suck ass
tends not to be overly inquisitive or empathetic
Well, if the bean counters consider the lack of those qualities to be what makes for a good callcenter worker then it's no wonder that the quality of support has gone down as fast as it has. Six or seven years ago when I called into support there was about a 50% chance of reaching someone who was smart and could solve my problem without relying on a script (which never solve my problem because if it can be found in available documentation I've already tried it before calling support), today there's maybe a 5% change if that.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The irony here is Xerox using this to "copy" their ideal brainless worker to pair asses to seats. Well played, Xerox, well played.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
One massive computer controlled database that marks you hireable or not hireable.
I had a hell of a time landing a federal position in the department that I had been working for years as a contractor because the automated system at OPM kept kicking my resume out of the candidate pool. If you fail to get past that, then local hiring managers aren't even aware you have applied, and have no recourse. A co-worker finally gave me pointers on "faking out" the word filters, and I went from "unqualified" to "highly qualified" overnight.
"The U.S. ranks 23rd among developed nations in the percentage of students with undergraduate degrees in science or engineering who are employed in related fields."
That couldn't possibly be due to years of massive overproduction of American STEM graduates, now could it.
For either their research or products? Kind of obvious how their "software hiring" is working then.
The data recommend a person who lives near the job, has reliable transportation and uses one or more social networks, ....
It's finally happened: one must have an online social network profile.
Since it doesn't guarantee success, it's a heuristic...and I wouldn't trust anybody trying to sell me one, who doesn't know the difference
this is about call center workers, dingus. they don't need to be intellectual powerhouses, just docile button-pushers.
I was "downsized" from my previous job in April, and have been searching since then for a new one.
In at least one case, I was told that I would not be brought in for an interview because I did not have "a presence on Facebook". This was considered a bad sign to them, a risk they didn't have to take, so they'd prefer to bring in candidates where they could evaluate their social media profiles.
I've only seen that in one place I tried (out of 15-ish) but I guess it'll be getting more and more common as lack of a Facebook profile falls into the realm of deviancy.
Remind me never to seek a Xerox job then. Who's gonna force the companies to add the legal equivalent of "or willingness to whore self out to Facebook or Twitter" to their equal-opportunity-employer pledges?
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
It'd be pretty funny when the live HR person pulls up your resume and sees that it's just a word cloud... or scary when you get hired, have been sitting in the cube for a week, and get called into the office over it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
They selected some hypothetical factors and run factor analysis or something related. Some factors came on the top. And now they publish a report...
WOW!
Or rather, another system to game, not that I would want to win that game (the "prize" is call centre work ick)
Jebus wept, I hope I can hang on to the job I have and retire as early as possible. Between this shit and other Grand Unified Theories Of Hiring and ageism and other bullshit (companies refused to even consider anyone currently unemployed, even for a short time), my skills and experience would be completely irrelevant if I needed to get a new job at my age and in my field.
You think call center employees have anything to do with that stuff?
It is a job of reading a script and following flow chart. That is it. That is why it pays so little.
And I guaranty you that they hiring managers are complaining how they can't get enough qualified workers.
Like I'll keep saying - if you can't get enough qualified workers, there's something dysfunctional about your hiring process.
I'm interested to see what will happen if a case involving this goes to the Supreme Court. The lawyers could conceivably argue, "Our minority employment % doesn't fit the current laws. However, we nonetheless didn't actually discriminate, and WE CAN PROVE IT. Please toss the law."
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
There's a growing trend of hiring intelligent Japanese, Chinese and Indian workers at a fraction of cost to U.S. ones
You think labor rates are cheap in Japan? GDP per-capita in Japan is about 4X that of China and about 10X that of India. Japan has plenty of talent but it isn't particularly cheap or abundant talent. Japan, like the US, relies heavily on automation. Labor intensive industries left Japan years ago just like they did in the US.
The U.S. ranks 23rd among developed nations in the percentage of students with undergraduate degrees in science or engineering who are employed in related fields
Now figure out what that means. It's not at all clear what significance is in having a lower percentage of engineers at a portion of the population. The US is also the third largest country in terms of population so even if they produce a lower percentage of engineers than some other countries they still will produce larger absolute numbers than most of them. You seem to be implying that graduating a lower percentage of engineers/scientists will result in negative consequences. While that might be true you have to back it up with more than just vague implications.
japanese workers cost a fraction of what US workers are paid?...
probably not.
but they'll work 2x.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Funny how our education ranking has dropped considerably once the 'No Child Left Behind' bill went into service.
Enforcing everyone passes education at the detriment of our more intelligent children does us no good.
I know there is a general backlash to the increasing use of algorithms in determining major decisions such as hiring. However, from a quantitative standpoint interviews have been shown to be extremely inaccurate as a judge of future job performance. There are simply far too many opportunities for bias on the interviewers part and so they tend to be neither reliable nor valid. Irrelevant characteristics such as appearance end up having far too much weight due to the halo effect. If you want the best result, depending on faulty human judgement is often the wrong choice.
For example, the Apgar score for judging the stability of newborn babies was designed to combat biases on the part of delivery room doctors. Prior to the use of this score, doctors rated how healthy newborns were based on a wide-range of criteria, and each doctor did it differently. When the Apgar score was introduced, it standardized the process by rating newborns on five categories: skin complexion, pulse rate, reflexes, muscle tone, and breathing. The result was that the error introduced by human bias was reduced and countless babies have been saved by quick intervention.
I've called Xerox support. It's not working! Clueless management must be their hallmark.
No article on hiring algorithms is complete without mentioning the secretary problem.
In brief, how do you decide that you've interviewed enough people and select a candidate, even though that means ignoring anyone you have yet to interview?
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
All generic tests for employment, whether marked by hand or by computer, are based on statistical likelihood of success based on past performance indicators. They therefore reduce the range of abilities of workers and guarantee stagnation.
In essence, saying "this appeared to work in the past therefore it's ideal in the future" is the antithesis of progress. And you can't monitor the usefulness of different characteristics because you've already rejected all the employees who don't conform to your ideal.
Big business in the West today is all about low risk mediocrity, i.e. just enough "cost cutting" and profit to maintain a few years of healthy executive bonus. Our performance shows it. The bright, naturally, remain in academia or ensure they have a sufficiently good reputation that they bypass all these stupid tests when entering the commercial world.
Some of the better tech firms understand this: MS abandoned most of its silly puzzles and Google had progressively reduced "college quiz" style interviewing (not quite there yet, though!). When IBM was king, it applied the most costly but effective way of selecting employees: huge probationary periods. Not sure what it does now. I wonder when the average company will catch up and learn?
" If a hiring practice is challenged in court as discriminatory, a company must show the criteria it is using are proven to predict success in the job."
Isn't the burden of proof supposed to be on the person making the challenge?
My younger brother has been looking for work for nearly 5 years. These "personality tests" and automated application systems are incredibly frustrating. Business managers won't talk to you, they just send you to their the web site to apply for a posted job. After half an hour of vague, logically inconsistent questions you've "applied" for the job. Nobody calls, nobody emails, and if you follow-up with the store they just shrug. And that's if you're lucky enough to be allowed to apply. Some web sites pre-screen you based on a few questions and actually prevent you from applying for the job at all.
Its frustrating for my brother and frustrating to watch. He's caught in the no experience/no job feedback loop and now its being run by machines. Does it really cost a business $5000 in losses for a supervisor to spend a day showing a new hire how to work a register, push a broom, and sign in and out for the day?
The U.S. ranks 23rd among developed nations in the percentage of students with undergraduate degrees in science or engineering who are employed in related fields
Gee, do you suppose that's somehow related to lost Science and Engineering jobs due to offshoring in the past decade?
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In a civil case, there is no burden of proof either way; the case is decided based on which side has a "preponderance of evidence" supporting their position.
(I am not a lawyer, nor do I anal).
That couldn't possibly be due to years of massive overproduction of American STEM graduates, now could it.
Of course not, there's a slashdot article every semester about how we need more people in STEM degrees, especially women.
Especially hot women.
Especially hot women with a fetish for nerdy men, and possibly a tendency for bisexuality.
What lost Science and Engineering jobs? or were you trying to infer call center jobs were in fact science and engineering positions?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
We need someone to talk to, and someone to sweep the floors.
Actually, it's the software development company who should be scared. These algorithms are proprietary, and a good purchaser will require - in writing - that the software comply with all hiring laws and likely include an indemnification clause for the business before their legal department will cut the software company a check. It's a get out of court free card for the business. If the software makes all the decisions, and the software complies with the law, and the software company indemnifies the business, then the business has a pretty firm ground.
Now, for the software company, this becomes a huge liability. Not just in the actual indemnification - and, trust me, no firm larger than 1000 people would ever buy software like this without such a clause. If they have to defend their software in court, they will have to release the parameters and decisions - their proprietary data. If much of that leaks, it becomes a field day for Resume Optimization Services. Imagine if Google had to publish their ranking algorithm. I foresee a serious resume arms race.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So, they're selecting for the best liars? The problem with any measurement of human beings is that they will absolutely try to game the system. Unless a company can keep the hiring criteria secret, they'll never actually get what they're looking for.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
I see a bunch of problems, including a few that'll leave the company circling the drain down the road. But one obvious one is that the whole thing depends heavily on what you're selecting for. I know my experience on the hiring side is that HR tends to filter out the best-qualified candidates and leave the ones that aren't qualified. That doesn't bode well for their ability to decide what constitutes a successful employee. It may work OK for tier-1 call-center support, but what happens when eg. you decide you want software developers who fix the most bugs the quickest and deliver the most new features the fastest? You end up with developers who write buggy code that can't be maintained or enhanced. You can't fix a lot of bugs quickly unless the code's got a lot of bugs in it, after all, so the criteria would filter out the developers who avoid creating bugs that'd need fixing. And thinking about what the system will need to do 2, 3 or 4 years down the road and coming up with ways of doing things now that'll accommodate those future needs takes more time than duct-taping together something that just about works right now, so you end up selecting for developers who'll hamstring your ability to enhance your system in the future.
In college math we called it the local-optimization problem: you get so caught up in finding the best way to find the maximum/minimum of a function that you end up missing the maximum/minimum.
Maybe Slashdot needs an algorithm to allow people to post. Perhaps it should go something like this... - do they stay on-topic? - do they understand the concept? - do they contribute useful information? Never mind, that algorithm would never fly here....
Sent from my ENIAC
Maybe a simply stupid bot....
If a hiring practice is challenged in court as discriminatory, a company must show the criteria it is using are proven to predict success in the job.
Wait a second, and what? Since when is a valid defense against a discrimination complaint "yeah, we descriminate, but it's okay because it actually provides results."
How far would that kind of argument get you in a Gender, Racial, or Age-based discrimination setting? If anyone said "As a cop i assume every black person is guilty of something, but hey, my arrest rate has gone way up so it's ok." that case would be DONE.
As usual, most of the respondents either did not RTFA, or simply did not understand it because many of the respondents have got it exactly backwards.
Management did not just make up a set of characteristics they thought would be good (in this case hire local drone) and hire those after doing a drone-test. That's the way it had been done for the last few thousand years.
So here's what happened.
A company tests applicants for a very broad set of characteristics.
They track the performance of the hires.
They compare the success of the hires back to the characteristics found in the test.
They make a model of the successful hires and then use that model to select future hires.
Scientific model:
Construct hypotheses
Gather data
Conduct test
compare result to hypotheses
refine hypotheses
Anyone that is complaining about the algorithmic process and it's outcome has no idea how most people are typically hired.
For the most part, It still boils down to 1: being someone's buddy/relative and 2: looking like someone the HR boss would like to hang out with.
So I, for one, welcome our new algorithmic masters. ( having neither buddy nor looking like someone you would want to hang out with)
Also, this is very far from being new. I know of one upscale hotels started doing this a couple or three decades ago.
They gave all their employees a variety of tests and observed what characteristics were associated with the successful ones in the various positions.
Then, when people apply, they assign them to the position they'll be successful in. The end result is that successful floor-cleaners are happy and productive floor-cleaners, and people whose profile fits the front desk are happy and successful there. And it should be obvious that swapping those two people might create two very resentful employees. It really shows, too, if you ever stayed in a place like that how the good moods of the employees is almost Stepford-spooky.
I've heard my share of stories of Japanese workers not doing much the first many hours, then cramming at the end only because it's taboo to leave before your superior, so long hours with not much more accomplished.
Not sure how true, but if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I can't see Japanese not getting burnt out if they actually worked 2x as much.
I'm an industrial/organizational psychologist at Evolv. I help build assessment content and I work closely with our predictive algorithms. A few clarifications from the WSJ article & responses to /. comments:
Yes, creativity and empathy are important for some positions, even in call centers! We're not looking for hateful drones who will hang up on you when you call in. In addition to staying longer, our recommended hires perform better as well. That means increases in both customer satisfaction and efficiency (we call it "average handle time"). But it's a curvilinear relationship - somebody who is too inquisitive is going to tend to waste your valuable time (and their employer's) while trying to resolve your issue. There's a balance.
Most test vendors put a test in place and walk away. At Evolv we take all the post-hire data from our clients and continually feed it back into our algorithms. The content, scoring, and weighting adjust over time to be more predictive.
At Evolv, we don't pair obvious responses when we create questions. So no "I like to steal office supplies" vs "I always show up to work on time" questions. Coupled with the continual refresh & validation of the content, there is no "answer key" that will get you a job. One of the neat things about this approach that we've found is that people applying to entry level positions often don't know what they're good at. Either they've bounced around a few jobs or they're just out of high school. So when somebody applies to a call center job that's hiring for both customer service and sales positions, and we can recommend the position for which they're likely to be "fitter, happier, and more productive"... that's kind of cool. Their employer will make more money off a more stable employee, and the employee ends up doing something they will enjoy just a little bit more. I know some folks will see it from the Radiohead point of view, as creepy (and I respect that), but we think it's better than dumping somebody into a position they're not going to enjoy just because they had the right keywords on their resume or they BS'd their way through an interview.
Science & statistics help eliminate some crazy gut-based hiring decisions. Some hiring managers want to ask call center applicants what they'll be doing in 10 years with an expected response of "I'll be working at this call center". But let's be realistic - while some people enjoy them and thrive, call center jobs are typically not where you plan to be in 10 years. We've also found that resume experience for entry level positions is less important than basic skills and attitude. It's easy to look at that and say "duh" but you'd be surprised how many people hiring & screening for these roles want to exclude applicants who don't have prior experience. So we can cut things out of the interview and hiring process that just don't mean anything.
Evolv doesn't just do employment screening. We periodically follow up with people after they're hired. We find out what information wasn't communicated well during the hiring process, get their feedback on how their training is going, their thoughts on their supervisor, that sort of thing. We feed all of this back in to improve the process. In some cases, that means identifying the trainers whose students perform poorly when they start working. Other times it could be flagging a tenured stellar performer whose numbers are starting to dip for a new position to help reinvigorate them. We strive to improve profitability across the workforce, and do so in an employee-friendly way.
Last but not least, we're still expanding through Xerox, so if you've called their customer service and had a bad experience it must not have been one of our hires. Joking aside, agents are people too, and even our top recommendations have a bad day. We're working hard to to make it better though!
Hope that helps! Yes, there definitely are risks with employment testing, but we try to avoid them and build solutions that make everybody's life a little better.
Cheers,
Tim
If you don't like that the hiring boss is an algorithm or that your employer may spring random drug tests on you or that you are required to wear orange hotpants, don't bother complaining to anyone about it if you're still going to interview there.
I was sought out specifically by a government agency because of some research work I had done and some tools I had developed - they basically had a position that was an EXACT match for my skills, just in a broader scope.
I had to submit my CV to their automated system and was rejected because there was a typo in one of the filter criteria for their automated screening system. Then when they fixed it and I resubmitted, because I was found unqualified previously I was booted out.
They reset the job listing, triple checked the criteria, had me re-format my resume and submit it from a different email address just to make sure it wouldn't reject, but then when a human HR manager looked, she noted I had been rejected previously (but not why) and rejected it again.
Bottom line, you need smart people handling your hiring, and you need to make damn sure your automated systems are helping rather than hindering getting good people in there.
What's funny is that they wound up hiring me as a consultant (costing them at least 3x as much as hiring me on staff would cost) for the work, which worked out great for me since I was able to keep my old job and do the new work telecommuting with only the occasional trip to various sites.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Voted republican? Never been a member of a trade union?
Well, what do you expect then? You have your masters total power over you and now they are using it. The slave who brings his own whip deserves it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Mitt Romney is not so self made, you have your facts wrong. His father was a CEO of a car company then Governor of Michigan and not a migrant farmer. Rich politically connected parents go a LONG LONG way to helping somebody with some talent go really far. Won't go into ethics because they have no place in business; everything is fair game as long as you are not caught.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If you can't tell the difference maybe he's simply bot stupid.
The most profitable call center employee may not be the one that fixes the most problems. For instance, an employee that can make a customer happy without fixing a thing or can talk the customer into buying a new replacement could be more profitable for the company.
The situation is fairly simple; what is in the customer's best interest in not necessarily in the company's best interest. The company seeks to hire those that are in it's best interest, not the customer's best interest.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
I was once asked (on a formal test, the last hoop) in a job interview for a big box store whether I would turn my mother in if I caught her stealing.
I was entirely unsure of what answer they were looking for. On one hand you would think they would want employees to be that dedicated to protecting their assets. But lets be real, is ruining your family worth your part time job, over a petty theft? Bitch at them and return the item to the store, yes...
I can't imagine anyone (who is 100% sane) would. This would indicate that anyone who answers yes is either a damned liar or not mentally stable. But by saying "no" means you may be immoral (yet, honest?).... so... which was correct? I answered "no" for the sake of honesty. And did not get the job. Not sure if that is why or not, but still wonder.
It's guaranteed to probably get closer to the answer you want in the opinion of some optimization hacker. It does that nebulous thing, which may or may not help, every time.
If you're not happy with that way of looking at algorithms, then I bet you don't think simulated annealing, soundex, minimax, whatever-Google-search-engine-does, or a host of other classical partial-solutions are algorithms either. Now that I think of it, that's all the "fun stuff," though I realize we're all into different things. I bet you're a "math guy." ;-)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
explains the slashdot moderators.
Japanese workers are extremely hard working and incredibly unproductive. I hope they serve as a warning on the importance of work/life balance.
The unemployment rate for STEM graduates is 2%, twice as good as the college graduate unemployment rate I don't think there is an abundance of STEM graduates.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I have worked in Japan, this is VERY true. During much of the work day, and especially the late afternoon/early evening was almost official goof-off time. Then everyone buckled down and got to work in the overtime hours. And if you left before 9pm you were supposed to apologize to everyone. It was weird.
Also, many Japanese Engineers are still paid hourly instead of being salaried, so it is to their advantage to work long hours. Plus, white collar workers wore "uniforms" of some sort everywhere. Often it was just the same color pants and shirt for everyone. And it was a different color for females.
And then there was always the morning "chant" meeting where everyone gathered and did the weird company chant. Of course when I asked my co-workers about any of these things I was always told "It's a Japanese thing."
I used to work in a materials analysis lab and probably 70% of the lab technicians and scientists were female. And probably 70% of those were actually very attractive women. Pretty much everyone was married, including me, but it was still a fun place to work. We had great parties.
No, Science and Engineering jobs were offshored. GE started trying it all the way back to 1992ish (when I was there).
Funny how our education ranking has dropped considerably once the 'No Child Left Behind' bill went into service. Enforcing everyone passes education at the detriment of our more intelligent children does us no good.
No child left behind was passed in 2001 our NAEP scores for math and reading were the same throughout the 90's and have increased 5% for 9 year olds since NCLB was passed 2% for 13 yo and no change for 17 yo. It would be nice to kick the trouble makers to the curb so they would stop holding the class back, holding teachers accountable and rewarding the successful ones but it will never happen. Children have a right to education even if they are infringing on others, teaching unions will never stand for teachers being paid and fired on merit. If you want to know why private and charter schools are more effective at teaching kids then there is your answer teachers can be fired and disruptive students are removed.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I welcome my new robotic hiring manager.
Age 25 or under with 9 years experience in a 2 year old technology willing to work for minimum wage.
These test have been seen to be worthless because almost any person can see how to answer the questions correctly. Just use common sense and don't answer any question in a way that to paint yourself to be a perfect angle. I have had these test and the answers were obvious.
Whenever I hear of software doing anything like this automatically, I immediately ask myself the following: "How"?
The reason I ask myself that question is because I am a computer-savvy person and a programmer who knows that there is nothing magical about computers. Unlike depictions of them in countless bad movies, they just don't have an AI to speak of. It is impossible for a computer to figure things out with any kind of reliability unless the input data is perfect, which it never is.
So, how in the HELL is some fucking program supposed to be able to determine these things?
Incompetence every day, all the time...
According to the American Chemical Society the employment rate in 2011 for young chemists is 38%. That's right, a little more than one in three young chemists has a job, and this is from a body notorious for down playing the un- and under employed within the discipline. It isn't significantly better in the other sciences. We might need more programmers. We don't need more scientists, we don't need more engineers, we don't need more mathematicians. The soup lines are already full of them.
Sadly, the NAEP scores are dependant on the current curriculum of the standardized tests and material provided to public schools in the United States.
This material has gotten worse since the time I was in school, by a factor of a few grades at least.
Where I was taught algebra in grade school and calculus in junior/senior high school, now algebra is taken junior or senior of high school and calculus is rarely if ever taught at all.
The NAEP standardized scoring is dependant on the overall grades and performance of children on the current curriculum of the national schools of that time. When the curriculum gets easier, so does the weighted system of the NAEP scores.
So the 5% and 2% increase in the 10 years since NCLB was introduced looks great on paper, but when you consider the watering down of our materials in the average of 8-16% overall, that shows a different picture.
Basically put, a 200 point score of today, would likely equate to a 170 before 2000.
Not enough qualified applicants = poor qualifying
Like asking for to much AKA a big list of software that is really all non needed or some stuff is easy to fill in gaps from people who have most of needed skills.
theory based degrees over people with people real skills / tech or trade school based degrees and then saying the people with the theory based degrees don't have the right skills.
When will an algorithm find the perfect wife? Similar conclusions...
On the other edge of that sword, I find that any company that wants me to take a personality test is probably not the kind of company I want to work for.
So yeah, everybody wins.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
ACS stands for, "Always Changing Shit". ACS has a tremendous training system. They are noted for taking under-educated disadvantaged applicants and turning them into effective call center workers. The ACS center on Hayes Street in Houston had alarge number of people who had wasted their high-school ears who were making $45K to $50K per year in wages plus bonuses. The had a policy of unlimited overtime, and successful performance in your overtime could drastically increase your takehome.
One of the major reasons this was accomplshed was the software that the agent used covered EVERY possible situation, and the main function of "training" was to get people familiar enough to use the software.
Then the major client, Sprint, lost 1.6 billion dollars and started thinking that maybe call center workers were being paid too much. Bonuses were cut. Overtime was dropped. Good workers left in droves when their pay went down $300-$400 per week. Advancement, which used to be quick, was halted an a hiring freeze was put in place. To cut down on the number of call center employees, shifts were changed without notice, and the incentive caused more workers to leave.
Guess what? Good call center workers who were screwed by the company into leaving are now in a database that says they are likely to quit too soon.
Call centers who hire call center workers instead of tech support workers are sweatshops. The sweatshop mentality prevails, and "customer satisfaction" is not the objective.
Furthermore, the ACS software is terrific! The end user could probably operate it with out an agent's help if allowed to. I'm sure that a robot with good speech capabilities could handle 75% or more of the call center traffic without human intervention, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was the goal.
That couldn't possibly be due to years of massive overproduction of American STEM graduates, now could it.
Of course not, there's a slashdot article every semester about how we need more people in STEM degrees, especially women.
Especially hot women.
Especially hot women with a fetish for nerdy men, and possibly a tendency for bisexuality.
I had an ex doing a physics degree and philosophy degree (dual)
and well she prefred to say that she was gay rather than bi
and she was well dangerous, nutter
so becarefull what you wish for
not like you need a brain and a half to do callcenter jobs ... you get your questionnaire outlined, you get a session before every new inquiry or sale starts and the rest is up to your model behaviour on the phone. It's an exhausting job, really constantly convincing people not to hang up for eight hours a day. I never did the sale thing but i did some 'market research' , couple of times in a few places. It pays the bills but it's underpaid and draining. Unless you got the zombie mindset for it maybe.
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
As long as you can show it will not discriminate among candidates matching the same criteria, it is as objective as can be. Then you justify your criteria and do not leave it to personal appreciation. Justification is proven historical success in the selection, which takes time of course. But better than leave it to a guy who does have a personal preference PER FORCE. Now, call center is not exactly representative of all jobs, but given masses, it is a good choice to automate.