Tackling The Quality of Hire Question

Attempting to scale the mountain of measuring Quality of Hire (QOH) is often a challenging task simply due to the definition of a quality hire. However, this does not mean that you should not attempt to reach base camp. Any work in this area places you ahead of the game and starts vital discussions, “what does good look like at our company?”

Start measuring the basics and evolve the measure of overtime as you further define quality. Preliminary analytics is fine – start with baby steps and grow your metric as you more clearly define and understand the definition for your organization. Trying for 5-10 key elements of measuring QOH is mostly likely an overreach out the gate.

Let’s look at pinpointing the challenges and proposed approaches to turn a mountain, into something more manageable and easier to scale. I have been working with clients on the topic of how to measure QOH and one of the most critical components is in defining what QOH means within your individual organization. Defining QOH, is key to determining what to measure. For example, the success profile of a quality hire is vastly different from your IT/Digital team to your Account/Client Relations team.

Here are some proposed definitions for QOH:

• Alignment to your inclusive workplace culture
• Contribution cycle time – how quickly do you expect new hires to ramp and contribute
• Hiring for growth – do you have a philosophy of hiring for the future or fit for role now
• What are your key leadership traits, and can they be assessed in the interview and after hire?
• Promotion readiness – how quickly will new hires be ready for the next step or increased responsibilities?
• Key competitors – are you engaging and bringing on new hires from your top competitors?

Once you have clearly defined your QOH for your organization let’s consider the measurements options:

• First year performance rating
• Retention
• Contribution/Ramp Up Factor: increased revenue contributions, decreased costs
• Project and Program participation
• Internal training participation
• Manager survey – how is my new hire performing 90-days, 6 months, 12 months
• Trends: Key competitor performance – do those hired from key competitors perform well against non-key competitor hires

A final thought is to develop a new hire profile utilizing the following information: training performance, education/certifications, previous employer, employee referral, passive vs active candidate during recruiting process. In developing new hire profiles, we found trends as an example that those who came from different industries performed better than those from direct competitors. We found that certain certifications or an investment in obtaining certifications and additional training was linked to a quality hire.

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