Improving Quality of Hire: 3 Tips

By Linda Brenner | October 12, 2014

"Quality of Hire"

You've heard it mentioned...repeatedly. We all can agree that one of the most vital pieces of the talent puzzle is the quality of the talent we hire. But what can be done to improve it? How can we really hone in on what needs to happen to raise awareness in our TA teams that this needs to be addressed?

Our Managing Director, Linda Brenner, offered up some important recommendations at the Recruiting Trends Conference in Las Vegas last month. The team from Shaker Consulting Group interviewed her on the topic and she narrowed it down to three key recos:

• Define the performance criteria or demands of the job
• Isolate and describe ‘home run’ or exceptional degrees of performance
• Link candidate evaluation methods to the job criteria

Define Criteria. It is important to evaluate and define BEFORE the interview process, what the performance criteria and job requirements and demands are. This is not the time to be a Monday Morning Quarterback, wishing you had planned differently. In order to successfully hire the best candidate for the job and for the company, these criteria need to be identified up front. During the TA process, the recruiter and the talent both need to be clear on what the ideal candidate would look like to mesh with the corporate culture, to achieve the group's goals and to be a long-term, satisfied, quality member of the team. This creates a roadmap for your interview, and will only be helpful for both TA pro and candidate.

What's a Home run? Apologies for continuing our sports analogies, but to achieve a hiring home run, you need to identify what degrees of performance constitute a winner in your organization. Once hired, the employee needs to know what he/she is measured against. Is it a proficiency scale you have established? An effectiveness rating scale? Whatever it is for your specific company, identify it, and use it to evaluate your employees using this scale.

Candidate Evaluation Methods.

It all goes back to the job criteria—once that is clearly established, it is important to revisit it during the candidate evaluation process. Pertinent interview questions and processes are one way to insure this happens. There are, of course, laws that need to be followed and it's important to consider your company's competency model during this process, as well.

Let us know what you think about Linda's recommendations. We'd love to hear from you!

Other resources:
This article from ERE.net suggests you forget about 'quality of hire' and focus on 'quality of hiring'.

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