Background

Telephone fundraising provider, Fundraising Direct, delivers fundraising solutions to Canada’s leading not-for profit organizations and charities. Each year, Fundraising Direct hires and trains new employees for its results-based telephone fundraising campaigns designed to maximize fundraising pledges, build supporter loyalty, and support their clients’ missions.

Challenge

Screening candidates for conversational fluency

With a diverse pool of applicants, including many young university students, and despite extensive training - the performance levels of new hires varied greatly. Fundraising Direct had extensive data on the key metrics of campaign success and knew which employees performed well and why. However, they had no way of applying these metrics to hiring. The old hiring process was manual, based on interviews, and captured only 1 of the 7 core skills required for success.

Solution

HiringBranch’s automated speaking assessment

HiringBranch analyzed the metrics and designed a 20-minute automated speaking test that captured all 7 core skills. The skills include a high level of conversational fluency, the ability to establish rapport with the client, as well as the ability to follow instructions. During a short proof of concept period, HiringBranch gave the speaking test to 200 new hires within their first 1 or 2 days of joining. The 200 test results were then correlated with the new employees cumulative pledge scores, ranked in 1 of 4performance tiers (from top-tier performers to low-tier performers).

Benchmarking

HiringBranch’s assessment accurately selects the top fundraisers

The correlation results found that all the top-tier employees had significantly higher final scores than the lower-tiered employees (p < 0.01 ). The HiringBranch assessment was clearly able to select the top-tier candidates who raised the highest cumulative pledges.

The best indicators for top-tier employees were the scores on conversational fluency and establishing rapport with a client. This means HiringBranch’s AI-powered speaking testis accurately pinpointing conversational skills that matter for sales success.

With this proof in hand, Fundraising Direct was now ready to pass every candidate through HiringBranch’s speaking test pre-hire and send offers to only the best.

Results

More revenue, scaled back interviews and new training capabilities.

It didn’t take long for Fundraising Direct to cut 80% of all interviews, limiting interviews to special case hires and reducing hiring costs by 1.5 FTEs.

“We just don’t need to interview anymore. I used to batch candidates into group interviews to save time. Today I have the gift of time and I am more confident than ever in our hires.”

Sarah Wise, Operations Director

Fundraising Direct is confident for good reason: 72% of hiring campaigns surpass targets and pledges have increased overall by 10% making their clients and internal stakeholders very happy.

What's more, Fundraising Direct adopted HiringBranch’s training platform enabling candidates to train up with simulated calls as early as 24-48 hours after being hired. From application to on-the-job is one seamless experience for candidates.

Better still, Fundraising Direct can now scale up quickly during hiring spikes, when it's most needed.

“Another problem that HiringBranch solved for us is hiring spike turnaround. We often have hiring spikes due to client demand. What used to take 2weeks, takes less than 2 days, effortlessly.”

Graeme Binning, CEO

There you have it. Lower costs. Drastically faster hiring. Authentic assessments and training. Better hires.

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