Reference no: EM133673421

Great Umbrella is a local insurance company that has been providing a variety of insurance products since 2001. In June 2023, a new CEO was appointed. After 5 months of focused group meetings with department heads in Great Umbrella and an off-site retreat with the Senior Leadership team, Ms Lim, the new CEO, launched refreshed business expansion plans. In line with these expansion plans, the HR Director was tasked to hire aggressively for a number of new positions for various departments. The HR Director called for an internal HR meeting and cascaded the recruitment requisitions to her team with the reminder of avoiding recruitment errors. During the HR meeting, the HR Director quoted the following:
"According to Edie Goldberg, founder of E.L. Goldberg & Associates, recruiting a new employees is not cheap. The average cost is nearly $4,700 per hire and can go up to three to four times the position's salary. We need to be mindful of the cost of hiring and to avoid recruitment errors as this is one of our KPIs".

Imagine yourself as the Talent Acquisition Executive in Great Umbrella, reporting directly to the Talent Acquisition Manager. From the recruitment requisitions, you have been given the responsibility by your Manager to hire 5 Insurance Customer Service Representatives. In order to avoid recruitment errors, your Manager has asked you to conduct telephone interviews to identify suitable candidates to be short-listed for the face-to face interviews that will take place at a later date.

The responsibilities of the Insurance Customer Service Representative are as follows:
• Answering phone calls and responding to customers' queries and complaints.
• Documenting customers' requests.
• Accessing customers' accounts and policy schedules.
• Providing customers with detailed information about policies and products.
• Forwarding potential customers and existing customers to sales agents when an insurance policy needs to be initiated or upgraded.
• Typing up complaint reports.
• Managing the customer complaint database.

The requirements of the Insurance Customer Service Representative are as follows:
• Polytechnic diploma holder with a minimum of 2 years' relevant experience working as an insurance customer service representative.
• In-depth knowledge of insurance products and policy schedules.
• Comfortable with using database software.
• Advanced knowledge of telephone and call forwarding systems.
• Advanced typing skills.
• Ability to explain detailed policy concepts in a simple way.
• Friendly and professional demeanor.
• Ability to remain calm in stressful situations.
• Excellent spoken and written communication and interpersonal skills.
• Fluent in English.

You have been busy sourcing and funneling resumes and managed to select 30 resumes. You are now ready to invite your first candidate for the telephone interview and from your candidate's resume, you gather that he/she possesses the first 6 requirements stated above in the requirements of the Insurance Customer Service Representative.

Question 1

Design an interview plan: You are required to apply course concepts to design a complete set of suitable interview questions for your telephone interview. Your interview questions must have a beginning, middle and ending (the three stages of an interview process). You are encouraged to use the following sample template to justify the KSAOs required for the role.