Call Center Job Interview Key Points: The Written Test

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The written test will determine your capabilities to handle the call center position you’re applying for. Take note that some written tests are about proper call handling, they may look easy to answer but the goal here to provide the BEST possible answer.

The most common written test in a call center job application is the Cognitive Test, a.k.a. the IQ Test. This consists of a bunch of questions that will weigh your mental process which allow you to perform basic day-today tasks.

Note: An IQ Tests is a way of determining how well your mind works in performing various tasks. It measures a person’s intelligence and determine in which category of intelligence a person belongs to. If you’ve only gone through Elementary grade, you’ll still have a chance to pass a call center job interview as long as you’re able to handle basic day-to-day tasks.

An IQ Test is generally given to any applicant; it’s not just in call center companies but in other companies as well. Passing your call center job interviews and written tests requires that your thinking should either be average or above average, anything below will not qualify you for the position you’re applying for.

Sample Questions in a General IQ Test:
1. (Analogy) What number best completes the analogy 8:4 as 10:__
– The answer is 5, because 4 is half of 8
2. (Classification) Which word does not belong? apple, marmalade, orange, cherry, grape
– The answer is marmalade, because it’s a preserve made from a fruit, a jelly-like sandwich filling.
3. (Logical) Book is to Reading as Fork is to:____________
– The answer is Eating.

A Cognitive Test in call center companies in the Philippines usually has time limits. While some companies give you one hour to complete your Cognitive Test, others will have you crunch in a 30-minute or less time limit because they want to examine how well your mind and behavior performs under pressure.

Tip: If you encounter a hard question on your Cognitive Test, skip it and move to the next one. You can always go back to that hard part after you’ve covered all the questions. Save time, answer more!

The tedious call center recruitment process where you wait in line for your next interview may wore you out and bore you tremendously, but you have to prepare yourself each time the interviewer calls your name because you’ll never know whether your next test is oral or written. Yawning in front of the interviewer is not a very enticing scene and may convey several meanings that the interviewer might find offensive.

Next part >> “Call Center Job Interview Key Points: Phone Simulation”. Continue reading?

Call Center Job Interview Key Points: Initial Interview

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Questions You Should Be Able To Answer the Right Way

The initial interview is always the hardest part to get through in a call center job application. The interviewer doesn’t only test your skills, they also test your behavior.

Among several call center companies in Metro Manila, there are those that have the same job interview strategies, initial interview questions, written tests and even the manner of presenting the exams; the one-on-one or a group interview first, account-specific exams, a phone simulation and then the final one-on-one interview with the manager or in front of a panel.

In a call center job application interview, there can be several answers to just one question and one single answer to several questions. So if you’re applying for a position in a call center company, you have to make sure you answer the interviewer the right way.

The Initial Interview

Though it’s boring for some and repetitive to others who have already applied to other call center companies, this part of the job interview is crucial in determining whether you’re skills are enough or not for the positions they are offering.

Considered as the most difficult part of a call center job interview, the initial interview basically tests your skills so the interviewer can determine in which account your skills will suit the best.

How to answer in an initial interview? Answer all of the questions with honesty, sell yourself (your skills), and answer in straight English. Honesty will be your best stepping stone when you enter the call center industry, because when you lie about yourself and your skills, your team leader or supervisor can easily detect that during training period and they will drop you out without remorse.

Note: Team Leaders, Supervisors and Managers are well trained in reading the behaviors of their staff as well as the applicants. So lying is not a very good idea.

Sample Questions on Initial Interviews:

  1. Tell me something that’s not written in your resume.
  2. Why did you leave your last position, or why are you leaving your current position?
  3. Why should we hire you?
  4. How do you see yourself 5 or 10 years from now?
  5. How would your last boss and colleagues describe you?

Carefully study the sample questions above, these are just common job interview questions that many call center companies use today, but do not take them lightly. What the interviewer is looking for in your answers is your ability to speak in straight English, proper diction and grammar, your spontaneity, body language and the manner of how you answer each question.

Next part >> “Call Center Job Interview Key Points: Written Tests”. Continue reading?

The Never Ending FAQs about Keywords!

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What are keywords?
Keywords or key phrases are either a word or group of words used to search for stuff over the internet. Basically anything you type in a search box is considered as keywords or key phrases. To SEOs, or Search Engine Optimizers, keywords are used to target specific website visitors to increase web traffic and sales.

Why do I need keywords for my website or blog?
Keywords are not just for corporate websites looking to expand their brand in the World Wide Web. Keywords can also be applied to blogs and even on a wiki pages. Keywords are used to help internet users find the exact information they are looking for based on their search query, and help website owners to easily target their audience.

Are keywords still important today?
Yes. Goolge may have become very strict and serious when they launched their Google Panda and Penguin updates, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the end of keywords optimization. The algorithm updates of by Google, and any other search engines, are designed mainly to eliminate spam and useless content over the internet. So don’t panic.

Why should I limit the use of keywords on my website or blog?
Too much of a good thing can either be just a bad day in the office or the worst thing that can happen in your life, depends on how you over-do it. As I’ve already said earlier, keywords are meant to help internet users find the information they’re looking for, not to be used as a tool to manipulate search engine rankings.

What should I avoid when using/applying keywords to my website or blog?
Keywords can either be the key to your success or to the demise of your online presence, so you better make sure you use them properly. The best way to use keywords is by following search engines guide lines and avoid making these old and nasty black hat SEO techniques.

Should I hire a SEO specialist to do all the complicated SEO keywords stuff for my website or blog?
Well, that depends on your needs and your budget. If you really want professional help for your website or blog, you can first try on a project-based SEO package before hiring a full-time staff. But, if you already know the scope and have a well thought out plan for your website’s SEO needs, get a full-time staff leasing service from SEO experts, because SEO is a long process and a very tedious task.

Understanding Online Job Hunting

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Online job hunting has become one of the preferred methods of job search for many applicants today. Aside from being convenient for many job applicants, it is also getting more popular for many companies as well. You can say that this method is not that labor-intensive to a certain extent- applicants need not travel in order to apply for jobs. In the same way, hiring companies need not attend to each applicant coming into their offices applying for the different vacant positions. In a way, it serves a convenient purpose for both parties.

Job hunting online allows job applicants to cover more ground when it comes to their job search. By simply filling up online job applications, they can apply for more job openings from different companies than they can ever accomplish if they personally go from one company office to another and handing out their job resumes. All they need is to go online, look for job posts for a certain position they are qualified for and send in an online job application via email. It can be that convenient.

Consequently, companies are more than willing to accommodate such methods of job search. After all, review of online resumes from job applicants as an initial step is a more efficient approach from the perspective of the recruitment staff of a hiring company. They can go through the online resumes first and look for qualified candidates for the job, even before scheduling that initial personal interview. This way, they can make efficient use of their time and effort by only giving the most qualified of candidates to interview. In a way, it also helps improve hiring rates based on the initial interviews that the recruitment staff makes.

But despite the convenience that online job hunting offers for both job applicant and the hiring company, success bears more weight on the former. Successful hiring is dependent on the actions of the job applicant. He or she needs to know the right way of how to apply for online jobs. Failing to do so can render their online job applications useless. Job applicants should first learn the proper ways of applying for jobs online to ensure that they have a better chance of getting hired.

Basic SEO Mistakes You Should Be Avoiding

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Age old Black Hat SEO techniques you shouldn’t be practicing

As Search Engines develop their bots to be more intelligent in detecting these Black Hat SEO techniques, the easier it is for webmasters to get their websites penalized. These unethical SEO techniques may have greatly worked for Black Hat webmasters long ago but today they are easy detected by Search Engine bots and the faster they can detect it on your website, the faster they can penalize you for it. So it’s best that you avoid these basic SEO mistakes instead on experimenting on them.

Keyword Stuffing in Content and Meta Tag

This classic black hat SEO technique can easily drain your search rankings faster than you can say, “Search Engine Optimization!” Keyword stuffing is the practice of repeating a keyword or keywords to a webpage’s content to the extent that its content reads like gibberish, and because some webmasters aren’t satisfied with bombarding loads of keywords onto their website’s content, they do it also on their Mata Keywords tag. Whether readable or not, it’s still a violation of Search Engines’ Guidelines.

Hidden Text in Website Content and Comment Tag

The most basic SEO mistake you should not experiment on ever! The Hidden Texts technique is the practice of putting words, sentences and paragraphs in a website written in such a way to be invisible or unreadable to human visitors by blending its text color onto the background or making the text font super small. Hidden texts are stuffed with keywords and mixed with a bunch of words that doesn’t make sense. The trick here is to fool search engine bots into thinking that the website has valuable content by putting several related keywords or by repeating the same keywords over and over in a webpage.

Example (Hidden Content):
This is keyword1 an example only Keyword2 of Hidden Content Keyword3 inside a website/page Keyword4.
If you Keyword2 like my website Keyword4, please Keyword3 share the link Keyword1.

A Comment Tag is commonly used by web developers to print their signature or provide instructions and useful reminders about the codes they’ve written. Even though keywords inside your comment tag are invisible to visitors, it is not the same case with Search Engine bots, you’ll be in for a big ugly surprise!

Example (Hidden Text in Comment Tag):
<!—Start of comment tag
Coded by Keyword1, Keyword2, Keword3, webProXXX Keyword4…
–> End of comment tag

Unrelated Keywords

When searching for keywords for your website, it always pays to pick the ones that are closely related to your niche. Gathering too much unrelated keywords is just a waste of time, they won’t rank well as you expect them to and they will just add more senseless tasks on your shoulder.

Doorway or Gateway Pages

In order to gain loads of web traffic, black hat SEOs use doorway pages. Doorway or Gateway Pages are either optimized for a few keywords, or heavily optimized with tons of keywords, with the attempt of fooling Search Engine bots into thinking that these pages are relevant to a search query so they can be ranked higher in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Visitors do not see these Doorway or Gateway Pages because once they click the link; they are automatically redirected to another webpage or websites which are generally misleading. This black hat technique can easily get your website deindexed by Search Engines.

Link Farms

This is an age old Black Hat SEO technique and a basic SEO mistake you’ll regret for a very long period of time. It can result to a penalty so severe you’ll probably fire your SEO guy for it! Link Farms are websites or webpages that are usually Free For All (FFA) with no real purpose, just to collect hundreds and thousands of links that are unrelated to each other, usually filed under “uncategorized,” and even mixed with the links of Adult websites. They do not pass as quality a backlink, no real traffic, and can get your website banned.

What’s worse? Several FFA websites do not have a “remove my link” request button or form, even if you email the website owner directly, your website’s link will remain in their listings for as long as the FFA website is up and running! So beware on where you submit your link to.

Cloaking

One of the most dangerous unethical SEO techniques that is used to trick visitors into clicking a link they think is useful to them. Optimizing a website solely for Search Engine bot by way of Cloaking results to a webpage that visitors may think “user-friendly” but doesn’t really provide the information they’re looking for, just a bunch of keywords scattered all over the page, or worse, mixed with Adult content.

IP Delivery

The use of IP Delivery today is for determining the location of the visitor via his IP and deliver content specifically written for that country (i.e. German written content for visitors with IPs from Germany). Some webmasters today still use this technique to fool Search Engine bots by presenting them with properly optimized content while they redirect human visitors to another page filled with unrelated content.

What do Black Hat Webmasters gain by doing this?

While some webmasters stumble upon these unethical techniques by experimenting, others do them purposely to gain money paid to them by their clients or just to ruin a competitor’s reputation. You can never be too sure where your link is placed across the World Wide Web, so it’s best if you check your backlinks every now and then. These basic SEO mistakes can easily land your website’s rank down to several pages in SERPs and can even have your website deindexed.

Online Job Application Tips

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For many applicants today, applying for jobs online has become the most preferred means of job searching. It offers a more convenient means of searching and applying for jobs, considering that they only need to go online to search for openings and apply for them. However, in order to achieve success in trying to get hired via online job postings, applicants should have to consider several things. Here are some online job application tips to remember on the next online job search.

Consider your qualifications.
When it comes to job hunting online, you should also focus on applying only for jobs that you really are qualified for. Just because online job hunting is convenient does not necessarily mean that you will be expecting instant success in landing that job. Carefully consider your options when you check out the different job postings online. Read them carefully to fully understand what type of job applicants are preferred for the position as well as the skills the job requires.

To improve your chances of landing the job you want, make sure that your qualifications and skills match those of what the online job post requires. This usually means reading those job postings carefully. Not only will it help improve your chances of getting hired, you will also avoid wasting your time job hunting for positions that you do not have any chance of landing in the first place.

Create an online profile.
One way hiring companies can get to know about you online is if you have an online presence to begin with. This means that you may need to provide all the relevant job information on the net for companies to access or to review. One way of doing this is by creating an online profile on certain job search portals. It will both be convenient for you and the hiring company to “meet” initially online.

As you create an online profile as a job applicant, make sure that you provide the information that companies look for when reviewing potential applicants. Basic information such as full name, mailing address, contact number, educational attainment, job history and others are essential in a good job profile. You can also consider it as your online job resume that companies can readily request for if needed. But you also have to make sure that you provide the information accurately and honestly.

Common Call Center Interview Questions

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The booming call center industry today is increasingly looking for qualified applicants to fill up the many vacant positions needed by various call center companies. This can be a wonderful opportunity and an exciting experience for you to try out. If you have the skills and the qualities that call center companies look for, then you may just have improved you chances in landing a good and possibly high paying position in this relatively new service industry.

However, just like with any other job opening, you still need to go through the screening process in order to land any call center job position. One of the more important aspects of the screening process is the actual interview. If you have passed through all the other screening processes and are now preparing for that one-on-one interview with the recruiting officer, here are some possible call center interview questions to prepare for and how you may be able to answer them effectively.

“Tell me something about yourself that is not in your resume.”

There are instances where interviewers will ask questions not always related to the position being applied for. One of the main reasons for this is to catch the applicant off guard and to find a means to evaluate him or her in terms of creativity, articulation as well as their level of comprehension skills. Job-related questions are easy for many applicants to prepare for. Questions such as the one above aim to determine how an applicant composes himself or herself if caught off guard.

You can prepare a good answer for such questions by talking about your interests, hobbies and accomplishments. You can also indirectly connect it to the job you are applying for by adding in your work ethic, certain personality traits, and other strengths that will put you in a positive light concerning the job opening that you are applying for.

“Can you provide me with a brief summary of your employment history?”

There are two things that interviewers would like to get from you by asking you this question- to determine how you articulate yourself and to get additional information with regards to your job history. Interviewers sometimes would like to know how long you stayed with a company, the type of responsibilities you handled on the job as well as the reason why you left. This will give them a more accurate picture about you. The best way to address this question is by providing accurate and honest answers that will dispel any suspicion or negative views about you. Tell them the reason why you needed to resign or leave your previous company.

“Why would you like to work in the call center industry?”

A typical call center interview will sometime include this question. One reason why many interviewers include it is because they would like to know if you are someone who is just trying out the field or someone who has long-term goals staying in the industry. A good answer to such a question would be to cite certain areas in the industry that you like doing, such as customer service, technical support, etc. and how you would like to improve your skills doing it. Of course, you can also honestly cite that you are attracted to the competitive salary being offered. But your answer should just not be limited to your aim for financial stability.

Job Hunters and Headhunting Firms

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Job hunters eager in looking for a job would usually prefer directly applying through companies in hopes of getting qualified and eventually hired as an employee. But with opportunities lacking and with more and more applicants lining up for jobs, there is a need to look for other ways of landing a job. Applying with a headhunting firm may provide just that avenue for many job hunters.

A headhunting firm or an executive search firm helps companies look for suitable candidates to fill up certain vacant positions. In a way, the firm also helps assist job hunters looking for openings that they may possibly qualify for. The headhunting trend actually is not a new concept. It started way back sometime in 1926 when company directors in the US started tapping into other channels for employment. The believed that these new channels with offer them a way of accessing a wider network for filling up vacant positions with qualified and experienced candidates. For call center companies nowadays, job hunting firms offer just that, a way to tap into a wider network of call center candidates to fill up the ever increasing number of call center jobs.

From the job hunter’s point of view, there may be certain misconceptions when it comes to dealing with a headhunting firm. Many believe that such firms only take a percentage of a candidate’s salary as commission, similar to what manpower agencies do. This is far from the truth. The headhunters strike up an agreement with companies to aid them in looking for qualified candidates for vacant job positions. It does not include taking a cut from the hired candidate’s pay. The salary contract is separate and is only between the client company and the hired candidate.

With the great demand for call center jobs that only continues to increase, many call center companies now depend on headhunting firms to help them find qualified candidates that their own recruitment department can’t fill up due to several factors. It also helps companies take care of the daunting task of searching, identifying, and interviewing prospective candidates for call center jobs. In a way, a headhunting firm is a go-between to help job hunters meet up with companies and vice versa.

How iStaff Outsourcing Services can help job hunters like you?

If you are an experienced call center agent looking for better job opportunities, iStaff Outsourcing Services can provide you with a way to land that ideal call center job you are looking for. Even if you are an entry-level candidate with no experience but with the right skills needed for the job, you can consider us as your personal agent to help you find a job. iOS can help you with our extensive networks of call center companies looking for people like you. Let us help you look for ideal call center jobs for you.

3 Most Common Job Interview Mistakes

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Receiving a phone call from a company is an implication that they were impressed with your resume. Next is job interview, where your potential employer will test your communication skills and personality according to your answers and how you are going to answer it.

But most of the applicants lose their job opportunity by doing mistakes under their noses. So for you, here are some of common interview mistakes that you have to avoid.

    1. Answering phone calls and messages. It’s like you are saying that you are not interested with the job. If you have an appointment then the interviewer also has his schedule. Try to turn off your phone or switch in it silent mode while inside the interview room, as respect to the interviewers.
    2. Appearing arrogant. Remember, you are applying for a job, your behavior and personality is being observed. No one’s wanted to work to a person that is hard to get along with.
    3. Talking negatively about current or previous employers. Telling negative things about your previous or present employer might leave an impression that you are not trust worthy. Do not expose you dirty blankets. Remember, you’ve been once part of that company you’re telling.

2013: The Growth of Call Center Industry in Philippines and Asia

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Philippines is a “rising tiger”, this is how World Bank country director Motoo Konishi describe the growth of Philippine economy during his speech on the closing ceremonies of 2013 Philippine Development Forum in Davao City Philippines, February 5, 2013. Motoo alleged that the government has demonstrated good governance and resulting to good economic status of the country. In terms of economic stand Philippines is no longer the “sick man of Asia”, Motoo added.

Due to the economic growth of 6.6 percent from the expected 5 to 6 percent target, The Philippines is expecting to reach the peak of its economy before the end of year 2015. There will be more employment especially to skilled workers, more job opportunity in Call center in the Philippines and Business Process Outsourcing, or BPO.

Call center industry in Asia will boost up due to the high English proficiency of Asians and particularly in the Philippines. Though China and India (other Asian countries that has a blooming call center industry) has an advantage due to low cost of labor, investors still prefer the Philippines to settle offshore outsourcing companies due to the fact that Filipinos are more polite and westernized than other Asian countries. Also call center in Philippines was an established industry since we beat India roughly 3 years ago as the leading in industry of call center in Asia.

BPO industry in the country opens another field such as healthcare accounts in which nurses could land in the said job. Philippines have approximately 40,000 new nurses every year, plus the knowledge of Filipinos in English language which could help them find a job such as Health care representatives in contact center industry of the country.

Today, Philippines hosts the biggest global call center companies like Convergys, IBM, Docomo, and Hinduja. This attracts more call center in Asia and other companies to start an offshore outsourcing company in the country.