A Measure of Success: Getting Started, Part 2

• Author: Scott Biggerstaff
• Posted: March 28, 2007
• Category: Recruiting, Performance Staffing
• Tags: No Tags
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Which metric is most important? Where should I start? Here’s one that makes everyone cringe: Quality of Hire. The common thinking is we’ll have to create an assessment, wait for the first year’s evaluation, compare them with other hires and consult an I/O psychologist to validate our results. It will take at least a year to get results and by then we’ll have moved on to something else. Not so, I say.

I think Quality of Hire is one of the most important metrics and it should matter to you. I also think it can be one of the easiest metrics to get started. It will require some work and a little interaction with your hiring managers.

“OH NO!” “Did he say we’ll have to work with the hiring manager?”

Yes I did. Collaborating with the hiring manager is the most important part of successful staffing and consultative recruiting. Finding ways to measure and foster that interaction will make you more productive.

Quality of Hire can be as simple as a few questions to the hiring manager about the new employee. In 30 to 60 days, go to the manager and try some of these…

• Do they have the skills needed to do the job?
• Is the new hire meeting expectations?
• Would you hire them again?
• On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate the Quality of the Hire?

With the answers to these questions, you can refine your next search to try and move the quality scale up a notch. Now you can start to create a Quality of Hire metric to improve upon or show your already well-honed recruiting skills.

But what just happened here? You got a chance to see how well you and the hiring manager as a team, filled the open req. This can be the first step in a consultative recruiting process and increased quality of hire. The focus here should be on Quality of Hire and did we match them with the requirements needed to do the job.

Some additional reading and resources that you might find helpful:

• An older article on ERE by Dr. John Sullivan proving some things improve with time, Quality of Hire: Why You Should Measure It, Part 1 and Part 2
• There is an excellent synopsis on the Performance Staffing site that summarizes a white paper also by Dr. John Sullivan with Master Burnett, Quality of Hire: Does Source Matter? Measuring Quality of Hire - The Ultimate Recruiting Metric. If you want a copy of the white paper, let me know and I’ll lend you mine.
• While you’re there check out Recruiting Economics: The Real Costs of Human Capital Acquisition by John Sumser.
• Quality of Hire: How Companies Are Crunching the Numbers on Workforce.com talks about 11 different ways to measure.

One of my favorites, Kevin Wheeler, answers a question which I am asked all the time in our Performance Staffing seminars (John Sullivan obviously hears this a lot too!): Quality of Hire: Does Source Matter? Next time we’ll talk about that. I believe source of hire is one of the basic building blocks for the rest of your metrics. But remember, GIGO. More next time.

Previously posted in this series:

A Measure of Success: Getting Started, Part 1