The need to measure quality of hire tops the list of talent acquisition challenges according to a new study by Aptitude Research, however only 26% of organizations have a formal methodology to do so.
Madeline Laurano, the person behind Aptitude and author of the study, is one of the smartest and most pragmatic talent acquisition analysts around, and this report reflects that reputation. I highly recommend it.
In the past, the way to measure quality of hire was to bring together data from separate systems like HRMS for retention data, performance management for performance and productivity data, and surveys for hiring manager satisfaction and fit.
This is a complicated process and is typically performed periodically, rather than integrated into the normal course of business in real time.
Or, organizations would measure quality of hire through the ATS which, as the report points out, was frequently a backward looking metric of how qualified the candidate was in the selection process.
In all cases, it’s a backwards looking metric that gathers old data, periodically and organizations who do track it find it difficult to put it to use.
Quality of Hire is Transformational for Both Recruiting AND Overall Business Success
The report shows that quality of hire is mostly talent acquisition’s responsibility. Over 80% of organizations in the report believe that quality of hire is a recruitment metric. And this is forcing TA professionals to expand their purview into the first year of employment to meet that expectation.
Few other metrics can be as impactful as quality of hire in the overall management of talent within an organization. This is why it’s troubling that, after so many years, the Aptitude report reflects such confusion in the talent acquisition arena.
When quality of hire is measured and known within an organization, it becomes the key to unlock powerful insights into quality of their hiring processes, their talent and their talent’s contribution to the business
With a solid metric of quality of hire in place, organizations can analyze:
- Quality of hire by source of hire
- Quality of hire by region or division
- Quality of hire by hiring manager
- Quality of hire by recruiter
- Quality of hire by employee satisfaction
- Quality of hire by customer satisfaction
- Quality of hire by revenue per employee
- Quality of hire by shareholder value
The list goes on, but you can see how this metric can illuminate and optimize recruitment operations, talent management and business value creation.
How to Track Quality of Hire
Finally the report looks at how to measure quality of hire, and unfortunately lists a daunting array of technologies and data sources to support achieving better quality of hire and optimizing hiring outcomes.
The reality is that measuring quality of hire is relatively easy with a new breed of talent feedback technologies like Survale. Organizations like Workiva, Dent Wizard, Exelon, Premise Health and many others measure quality of hire automatically with no need to bring together disparate data from different sources in their HR tech stack.
In fact, all they do is let their recruiters and hiring managers work as normal and leadership gets real-time quality of hire data 24/7/365.
Once a candidate is marked as hired in the ATS, Survale initiates feedback forms that go out automatically at predetermined intervals. This feedback comes in from hiring managers, recruiters and new hires. It measures hiring manager satisfaction, new hire satisfaction, time to productivity, retention, organizational fit and more. Feedback can be tailored to bring back whatever data is needed.
And this is real time data as opposed to the typical periodic “look back” at quality of hire, so it allows organizations to identify risks to retention and intervene to mitigate turnover in the crucial 1st year of employment.
These companies can analyze these metrics using data shared with the ATS, along with feedback from any other talent facing feedback programs they may have. This makes it easy to measure quality of hire against recruiting metrics like time to hire or source of hire. Or onboarding satisfaction. Or location, division, hiring manager, job type, compensation satisfaction, customer satisfaction – you name it.
It’s long been my contention that most organizations overthink quality of hire metrics, many sacrificing the good for the perfect. That said, Survale is a young company and there has never been a solution that is this purpose-built for gathering data/feedback and optimizing talent facing programs within the enterprise
The Aptitude report also extracts recommendations on which factors to include in quality of hire metrics and I recommend you down load the report to review.
To download the Aptitude report click here. To view how easy Survale makes it to measure quality of hire, click below for a video demo.
