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Retail Recruiters Fight High Turnover with Cost-Efficient Speech IVR Pre-Assessment Tools
Pre-employment testing is a necessity in building a cohesive workforce and in retaining valuable employees. In response to the high-turnover trend in the retail industry, Message Technologies, Inc.
(MTI), an international provider of speech interactive voice response (IVR) outsourcing services, launched its “AssuredVoice Retail Employment Pre-Assessment Tool” for use by retailers and with retail solution providers.
According to a recent report entitled Pre-employment Testing and Assessments: What is the State of the Art? by the Aberdeen Group, hiring and retaining top talent is the driving concern of human capital management professionals today.
"Retailers, with their consistently high turnover and employee theft rates, have the most critical need for pre-hiring screening programs,” stated Aberdeen Group Vice President of Retail Research Paula Rosenblum. “While the ultimate hope is to reduce turnover, ROI can also be achieved by hiring trustworthy employees who can learn systems and procedures rapidly.”
“Speech IVR pre-employment screenings is one of the most cost-efficient developments to come along for recruiters and trainers in years,” stated MTI President Darrell Knight. “Replacing traditional pre-employment screenings with a speech IVR application can reduce costs and increase ROI significantly.”
MTI has produced more than 500,000 employee assessments to date for 20-25 companies and partners in various industries. Applying this experience to the retail industry, MTI partners with retail, online and catalog solution providers to develop the latest, cost-efficient technology such as the AssuredVoice Retail Employment Pre-Assessment Tool.
Working with Professional Datasolutions, Inc. (PDI), a provider of cutting-edge solutions to the convenience store industry, MTI developed and provided a speaker-independent voice response (SIVR) application that provides a telephonic interface to PDI’s proprietary pre-employment test. The PDI HR3 P.A.S.S III pre-employment test has been integrated with MTI’s AssuredVoice Survey tool and has been designed for easily accessible telephonic delivery and scoring.
The AssuredVoice IVR interface allows a job applicant to access the system via a toll-free number and answer detailed questions, simply by speaking. Candidates can answer generic questions and respond with yes/no/maybe responses by using speech recognition software or touch-tone inputs. Retailers can specify the functionality of the surveys and provide questions that allow candidates to proceed to various levels or disqualify them.
The system can also provide a unique candidate or applicant identification number for future IVR system access or use as an identifier at a later interview, thus streamlining the hiring process.
