Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) is an independent health insurer that employs thousands of service center agents to support its more than three million members. With many demands on their time, the service center managers needed to reduce any processes that took attention away from operations. The most pronounced time drain was continually hiring to fill vacated positions, an effort that required the processing of many poorly qualified applicants to find the “keepers”. BCBSNC turned to PreVisor® to help them improve both their hiring procedures and the quality of newly hired employees.

PreVisor’s goal was to develop the optimal selection solution for hiring customer service representatives and claims specialists — identifying those most likely to learn faster and stay on the job longer. First, to learn more about the specifics of the position, PreVisor’s consulting team of industrial-organizational psychology professionals observed, interviewed and surveyed all those that had a stake in the position, including current employees, their supervisors and the department managers. Using study results, PreVisor determined the specific knowledge, skills and abilities most critical to on-the-job performance in the BCBSNC service center. They then pulled together a solution of both hard and soft skill assessments that could measure candidates for the traits most closely correlated to success in the position.

Since implementing PreVisor’s employee selection solution, the service center’s interview-to-hire ratio has reduced — managers now spend 20 percent less time interviewing. Internet-based assessment of the specific qualities needed for the job eliminates having to process the less-qualified applicants, improves efficiencies and enables BCBSNC to hire the same number of new employees in less time. In fact, the hiring process has improved so much that managers are talking about it with their counterparts in other departments within the company.