How to Determine Quality of Hire

So you’ve got a new hire. Congratulations! It’s likely that the person you brought on board has some skills, but how do you know if they’re right for the job? This can be difficult to determine because hiring is an art and science. But there are ways to measure quality of hire so you can evaluate the effectiveness of your hiring team.

Step One: Define Quality of Hire

When you think about it, what is a quality hire? It’s an employee who is performing well and contributing to the organization. Quality of Hire (QOH) is a key performance indicator (KPI) that is used to determine the overall effectiveness of a hiring and sourcing process. In effect, Quality of Hire is a metric that indicates the success and performance of a recently hired candidate in the context of the associated efforts to hire that same candidate.

“Quality” is a non-numerical concept by definition, so how do we measure QOH?

Well, measuring Quality of Hire requires defining numerical representations of employee performance such as:

Competency Model Match Score: This measure assesses whether or not candidates have mastered key competencies required for success in a given position. It also identifies any gaps in knowledge or skills that may hinder them from achieving their goals on the job.
Job performance score: This measure indicates how well employees have performed in their role in a given time.
**Ramp-up time score: **This measure indicates how long it takes for a new hire takes to reach full productivity in their role at the company.
Engagement score: This measure shows how committed employees are to your organization’s vision and goals.
**Cultural fit score: **This measure indicates how well an employee’s beliefs, values, and behaviors align with the organization’s people and mission.

Step Two: Identify the Metrics You Want to Use

There are two types of metrics you can use to define Quality of Hire: quantitative and qualitative.

Quantitative metrics are numerical figures, like time to fill, cost per hire, and engagement scores. Qualitative metrics, on the other hand, include employee performance reviews and employee satisfaction surveys.

Quality of hire can also be determined by looking at annual reviews given by managers at their discretion throughout year one after employment begins; however, this method can be subjective since it depends on manager experience level as well as personal biases towards certain types of people over others (e.g. eager versus lazy).

You can use any combination of quantitative or qualitative metrics to define QOH, you just have to remain consistent so that you can track QOH over time and make adjustments as necessary.

Averaging the scores that make up your Quality of Hire allows teams and hiring managers can reflect on gaps in their interview and hiring process to find even better candidates in the future.

Step Three: Close the Loop on Your Data

In a sense, Quality of Hire determines how well a candidate does what they were hired to do. This is driven by two factors the company can control:

Quality of the job description: Did you accurately portray what the candidate would be doing? Were the required experience expectations in your job description correct?
Strength of recruiting efforts: Were you able to find candidates who matched the description on a consistent basis? Did you access the right audiences in your search?

Create an iterative feedback loop between the job description creation process and the candidate conversations to bring in the highest quality candidates possible. Quality of hire is a subjective evaluation and should be the sum of the new hire’s first annual performance review.