English Language Proficiency Study

Vangtel recently conducted an English language assessment of bilingual applicants living in Hermosillo, Mexico. The evaluation successfully confirmed the advanced language proficiency and availability of skilled bilingual agents appropriate to the various BPO services provided by Vangtel in Hermosillo. The assessment also confirmed Vangtel’s recruitment process, based on client requirements, is well structured, professional, and can draw from a large pool of highly qualified and educated applicants.

Assessment Overview
A client from Arizona had a number of projects that involved outbound bilingual sales. They were interested in exploring the English language proficiency of the Hermosillo labor pool. Vangtel, after a pre-screening process, coordinated a formal interview session of selected applicants at the client’s headquarters in Nogales, Arizona.

Assessment Process
Vangtel recruited top applicants through targeted newspaper ads and various partnering universities. Upon received 65 resumes, Vangtel’s Human Resource professionals, based upon qualifications, narrowed the applicant pool down to 46 applicants and conducted pre-interviews. Vangtel then recommended 22 of the best prospects for preliminary phone interviews to the client.

The client then selected 11 of the best candidates for participation in the interview at their headquarters in Arizona. All 11 candidates accepted the invitation and made a day trip to Nogales, Arizona.

The interview day was planned by the client to include training at 6:30 am followed by all candidates being tested in a series of phone interviews with key operations managers. In between these test calls, the candidate group practiced making live sales calls and impressed the client with an acceptable closing rate.

To confirm the impressive results from the morning’s interview sessions, a call monitoring session was used. Five exceptional candidates, who scored the highest points during the morning exercises, were chosen for a live demo, while a third party listened and assessed their skills. After 45 minutes of evaluation, the candidates equaled or bettered agents who worked for the client with professional training and months of experience.

Assessment of Candidates
After the language exercise portion of the interview, various supervisors and managers expressed their approval and satisfaction with each of the 11 tested candidates. One supervisor related, “To be honest, I was expecting totally different English skills. I’m impressed with their proficiency level…and embarrassed because these newbie’s closed as many sales as our established team.” The client site director said, “The interviews went extremely well. Vangtel’s people speak better English than my people here in Nogales, Arizona.”

Conclusion
The client was pleased and convinced that Vangtel employees could provide exceptional bilingual language skills that would surpass any needs their outbound sales efforts would required. Vangtel appreciated the opportunity to showcase a few of the many talented employees that the Hermosillo area can provide any client interested in establishing a call center with Vangtel.

Interested in scheduling an informational webinar on Vangtel’s Shelter model? Please email the author at: ssimmons@offshoregroup.com

This entry was posted on August 24, 2007 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Nearshore Outsourcing To Mexico. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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