How To Become A Collection Agent: What It Is and Career Path

What is a collection agent and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Are you a kind of a salesperson, a financial strategist who fully understands the legitimate processes, bankruptcy, and fundamental laws? If yes, you may consider the role of a collection agent. Being a collection agent, generally, your core duty is to recover the outstanding payments, loans, or bills from the debtors. In this job, usually, you may act as a debt collector who tries to collect unpaid debts from businesses, organizations, and customers.

Working as a collection agent, usually, you may spend your day making calls to customers or debtors, negotiating their payment plans, investigating diligently about their payment status, and devising the ways to manage the delinquent accounts. Working between a creditor and the customer, sometimes, you may provide financial advice or alternative repayment schedules to the customers. By collecting the debts, you may work closely with accounts receivables staff, sales, and legal departments to develop strategies of collection processes and procedures.

To become a collection agent, most commonly, you may need a high school diploma and experience working in customer service or as a call agent. However, taking courses at a community level college or vocational school may improve your chances of success in the collection field. Being a collection agent, typically, you may work in collection agencies. However, you may be employed directly by the creditors or credit card companies, healthcare facilities, or banks.

Typically, you may work full-time positions, but you may work irregular shifts. Since most of the time, debtors are only available on nights and weekends, so you may need to work outside of regular business hours to recover debts and earn commissions. Not only that, but with advanced negotiation and persuasion skills, you may set up and run your debt collection agency.

ScoreCollection AgentUS Average

Salary

2.6

Avg. Salary $32,689

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.9

Growth rate -8%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

5.9

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.48%

Asian 3.57%

Black or African American 12.29%

Hispanic or Latino 19.54%

Unknown 4.02%

White 60.10%

Gender

female 62.67%

male 37.33%

Age - 46

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 46

Stress level

7.9

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

4.9

Complexity level is intermediate

7 - challenging

Work life balance

7.6

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a collection agent

Explore collection agent education requirements

Most common collection agent degrees

High School Diploma

34.1 %

Bachelor's

28.2 %

Associate

22.3 %

Start to develop specific collection agent skills

Skills	Percentages
Customer Service	20.07%
Payment Arrangements	19.09%
Delinquent Accounts	6.57%
Debt Repayment	5.79%
Past Due Accounts	4.63%

Complete relevant collection agent training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New collection agents learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a collection agent based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real collection agent resumes.

Research collection agent duties and responsibilities

Manage patient focuse reports, collection modules, provider/facility A/R, collections, patient discharge letters.
Used computer GPS to locate vehicles.
Input assignments and update clients via computer programs (RDN and PRIOS).
Demonstrate professionalism and customer support while following FDCPA guidelines.

Prepare your collection agent resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your collection agent resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a collection agent resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable collection agent resume templates

Build a professional collection agent resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your collection agent resume.