70 contact centre employees recruited in days for a COVID-19 hotline

Challenge

Navigating workforce transition while maintaining stability.

Solution

A people-centred Career Transition Programme.

Outcome

  • Greater workforce resilience
  • Supported career confidence
  • Maintained operational continuity

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How Davidson Executive & Talent helped a major Queensland government agency rapidly establish a frontline workforce to respond to community demand during the COVID-19 public health emergency.

  • 70 temporary contact centre employees recruited for the COVID-19 hotline
  • Days to mobilise, from an initial weekend request to candidates commencing the following week
  • 160 temporary employees later recruited for a Queensland state election
  • Ongoing exclusive recruitment partnership established following the initial engagement


Building a frontline workforce in days

When COVID-19 reached Australia, a major Queensland government agency experienced a rapid increase in community demand for support and information.


The agency needed to establish a dedicated public health hotline capable of responding to high call volumes during an evolving emergency.


That required people, quickly.


The department contacted Davidson over a weekend with an urgent requirement for 70 contact centre agents. Suitable candidates needed to be ready to commence the following week.


Speed alone, however, would not be enough.


The people answering these calls would be supporting community members during a period of significant uncertainty. They needed to communicate clearly, remain resilient under pressure and engage professionally and empathetically with vulnerable callers.


Davidson Executive & Talent needed to help the agency build a workforce in days without reducing selection to a race through resumes.

Assessing for the realities of the role

Davidson worked with the agency to define the capabilities and behaviours required in the hotline environment.


A competency profile established consistent criteria for candidate assessment and selection.


Rather than relying on experience or resume screening alone, Davidson designed a customised assessment centre to evaluate communication capability, customer service approach, resilience under pressure and overall role suitability.


Candidates progressed through resume screening, telephone interviews and competency-based assessment. Role-play exercises provided an opportunity to assess responses in situations relevant to the frontline service environment.


Reference checks aligned with labour hire requirements completed the selection process.


Candidates were assessed and ranked throughout the campaign. This gave the agency a structured basis for making consistent decisions despite the compressed recruitment timeframe.


The approach balanced two competing requirements: mobilising a large workforce quickly while still assessing whether candidates were suited to emotionally demanding frontline work.

Supporting the workforce beyond placement

With employees moving into roles quickly, maintaining communication throughout deployment was also important.


Davidson established a dedicated project inbox and conducted regular workforce check-ins.


This gave deployed employees a consistent point of contact as the hotline commenced operations and demand continued to evolve.


Davidson also established a merit-based talent pool, giving the department access to previously assessed candidates for future workforce requirements.


The recruitment solution therefore addressed the immediate requirement while creating a mechanism the agency could draw on as workforce demand changed.

Woman smiling at a desk in an office call center, wearing a headset and typing on a computer.

70 employees recruited for the COVID-19 response

Davidson successfully recruited 70 temporary contact centre employees to support establishment of the public health hotline.


From the department’s initial contact over a weekend, candidates were required to be ready to commence the following week.


The competency-based process gave the agency a structured way to assess candidate suitability within that highly compressed timeframe.


The relationship continued beyond the initial COVID-19 response.


Following the engagement, Davidson became an exclusive recruitment partner for the department and supported further major workforce campaigns.


This included recruiting 160 temporary employees for a Queensland state election.


The ongoing relationship provides further evidence that the recruitment model could be applied beyond the original emergency requirement and adapted to subsequent high-volume workforce needs.

From urgent hiring to a repeatable workforce response

Rapid workforce mobilisation creates a difficult balance for public sector organisations. Moving quickly matters, but so does selecting people suited to the work they will perform.

For this Queensland government agency, a structured assessment process helped address both requirements.


The immediate result was clear: 70 temporary employees recruited within days to support the COVID-19 hotline.


The model then extended beyond the initial crisis, with an ongoing exclusive recruitment partnership and a subsequent campaign for 160 temporary state election employees.


For organisations facing sudden workforce demand, the experience demonstrates the value of having a recruitment approach that can scale quickly while maintaining structured, role-relevant assessment.

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