Building Workers

10 Tips To Remember When Applying For A Call Centre Vacancy

This has led many of today's youth to apply for call centre jobs - whether as part-time work to earn pocket money in college days, or for full-time sustenance.

While applying to a call centre job, here are some tips that one should keep in mind:

1. At home or in office? There are a number of at-home call centre jobs available, and for no sign-up fees whatsoever. You can work full-time or part-time, but you may have to submit to an in-person background check or occasional reporting to meetings at the company's office.

2. Have excellent listening skills. Train yourself to listen - to people with different ways of speaking, to people who stammer, to people who don't want to see reason, and to people with less-than-fluent language. This is the first prerequisite for a call centre job.

3. Look online. As a lot of call centre jobs are location-independent or offshore, they are usually advertised online rather than by word-of-mouth or the local papers.

4. Apply to call centres in areas of your own expertise. Nothing can substitute learning gained by experience. If you are deeply familiar with a subject thanks to schooling or simply exploring it as a hobby, choose that area to apply to. For example, someone interested in cars could apply to a car company's customer support call centre.

5. Office hours. Night shifts are not always safe or feasible for everyone, so do not apply for night-shift-only jobs if this is the case for you. Even at home, fix your hours - do not bite off more than you can chew.

6. Look at organisations' pages, not just job portals. Keep track of the organisations who typically hire at-home or in-office call centre workers. They will probably advertise on their own pages a precious few hours or days before putting up the same job on a portal.

7. At the interview, stay focused. A lot of young people go into call centre jobs for a quick buck. This attitude seeps into their manner at the interview too. DO NOT let this happen to you - stay serious, stay focused, and show that you are dedicated to the job you are applying for.

8. Get some experience in customer service. Most of us have had at least some experience in customer service. This could be at the neighbourhood fair, volunteering at school events, or during a brief internship. You can put this to good use in your call centre job.

9. What makes good customer service? Evaluate what you would do to give good customer service to people accessing your call centre, as your interview panel is very likely to ask you this question.

10. Make the best of what you have. Experience and training, in curricular and co-curricular fields, will all come to use when you place your job application. Get your resume professionally written, to present the talents you have in the best way to get a call centre job.

Even if the job is just for your pocket money, apply for it with speed and sincerity - call centre vacancies never stay long!