It’s expert round-up time again, and this time we’re looking at how to improve quality of hire. According to LinkedIn, quality of hire is still the most valued hiring metric by quite some distance, and yet it’s still one of the least understood.
Without further ado here are the best ten perspectives from around the web, looking at ways to measure, assess and improve quality of hire. For the best online recruitment software on the market, start using Recruiteze. Not only will help improve your hiring quality, but it will make recruiting easier and more efficient. Click here to start recruiting easier!
‘11 Ways To Improve Quality Of Hire’
Lou Adler
Lou Adler is a force to be reckoned with in the recruitment world, so his thoughts on how to improve quality of hire are well worth listening to.
Here goes.
- Define exceptional performance rather than an exceptional person
In other words, Lou recommends, write your job descriptions based on what candidates need to achieve, not what they need to have. In other words, not ‘must have 5 -8 years product marketing experience’ but ‘must launch new product line within 6 months targeting 20% market share in 2 years’.
- Don’t post internal job descriptions
“Starting with stronger candidates is one way to hire stronger people”, Lou writes, and this is self-explanatory. Broaden your hiring pool.
- Turn job descriptions into stories to attract stronger people
We’ve written before about writing stronger job descriptions, and Lou pulls out an important point. If you create a “compelling career story” you’ll get potential candidates excited, so you’ll be attracting a broader range of (more qualified) candidates.
- Embed skills into your career stories
Or, in other words, convert important skills into outcomes as part of your job descriptions. Avoid “must-have” requirements, Lou recommends, as these will “turn the best off”.
- Choose a catchy title for your job advert
If you want to attract the best candidates, you need the best candidates to notice your adverts. This is where a catchy title comes in.
- Create a pitch tweet
You already know how important social media is, so this one is self-explanatory. Plus, if you’re able to distil your value point into 140-characters, you have a really solid idea of what you offer and who you’re looking for.
- Screen on achiever terms
Hiring high achievers is a pretty good indication (although not foolproof) that you will improve quality of hire. When you’re screening, use Boolean search strings associated with high achievers, such as ‘award’, ‘honor’, ‘leader’ and so on to whittle down your candidate list.
- Engage in conversation
In other words, don’t try and hurry top candidates through your hiring funnel. Start conversations, get engaged, let the process take a little time. The best candidates tend not to jump ship in a hurry.
- Modify the job to fit your hire
Cookie-cutter job descriptions don’t work for everyone. If you’re looking for a candidate who truly stands out, you should be prepared to tailor a job description that really stands out to them. Engage your candidates and ask them what they want – and make changes to make your job more closely concord with that.
- Interview on past performance
“If the person has comparable accomplishments and is motivated to do the work required, he/she has exactly the skills and experiences required”… Or, put simply, when you’re interviewing you should be looking for comparable past achievements.
- Assess quality of hire pre- and post- hire
Lou recommends you assess quality of hire both before you hire and afterwards, in their performance on the job. The closer those two metrics are, the more efficient and effective your hiring process is.
For more from Lou Adler, you can read the original here.
‘Technologi es To Improve Quality Of Hire and Hiring’
Blogging4Jobs
Short n’ sweet, this piece from Blogging4Jobs offers three different ways to make sure your candidate shortlists are up to scratch, in order to improve quality of hire. Under each heading, the author offers various tools and technologies that could be useful too, making this piece super-practical, if a little low-brow next to Adler. Free, online recruitment software is technology that can make a huge impact on your efforts. Try Recruiteze today, for free!
- Better Test Your Candidates
Better testing your candidates during the pre-screening phrases is an obvious way to improve quality of hire. The author, Heather Huhman, recommends Smarterer, ShinyNeedle or HireArt as innovative websites allowing hiring managers to test candidates digital, social, critical, problem-solving and technical skills as a stage in the hiring process.
- Check Candidate Recommendations
This point rests on the principle of social proof, which should be as important to recruitment as it is to other marketing activities. Huhman recommends going beyond the LinkedIn recommendations feature and using sites like Recmnd.Me, Zao or Bright to find candidates who come with a dose of social proof attached.
- Try a One-Way Interview
Or, in other words, ask your candidates to submit a video interview as part of the hiring process. The hiring manager simply establishes a list of basic questions and the candidate films him or herself answering them. A great way to save time, although how much this improve quality of hire remains to be seen…
You can find the full piece here.
‘When It Comes To Quality Of Hire, Don’t Play The Blame Game’
Green Job Interview
This article by Greg Rokos considers the complicated question of who’s responsible for quality of hire. Recruiters? HR teams? Hiring managers? Company culture?
Greg points out that the biggest problem complicating accountability is that quality of hire simply isn’t measured as much as it should be. In fact, he points out that only 32% of companies actually track statistics on quality of hire, making it very difficult indeed to lay the blame with any one group of people.
It’s easy, Greg writes, to blame recruiters when hires go bad but often this is a result of “perfect fit syndrome and unrealistic expectations”. Even if it is the recruiter sending in bad candidates, it might be a problem with how the corporation in question hires or briefs their candidates – not with the recruiter him or herself.
The major hurdle, Greg observes, is for companies to reassess how they handle the hiring process: “it’s ultimately up to you and your organisation to improve quality of hire”. First, he notes, you should measure quality of hire (before and after the interview. Second, you must keep your process consistent so changes in quality of hire can be meaningfully interpreted.
Thirdly, companies should pay attention to how they brief recruiters. Don’t hand recruiters “a list of impossible skills and requirements and a salary 20% less than the other guts are offering [and expect them] to fill that slot quickly”.
Lastly, companies should try and re-imagine how they view their top candidates, instead using a performance based hiring approach (as advocated by Lou Adler). Ultimately, Greg concludes, “What you shouldn’t do is pick someone to blame. Focus on improving yourself at every turn instead of pointing the finger. Only then can you truly transform how hiring at your organization is done”.
3 Tips To Boost Quality Of Hire During The Talent Crisis’
Recruiter.Com
In the face of ever continuing (or at least, ever talked-about) talent shortages, this piece from Recruiter.com offers three tactics to improve quality of hire – without dramatically increasing your time to fill.
Here goes.
- The grass is greener on the inside…
In stark contrast to Adler’s point about removing the internal job descriptions, this article recommends putting emphasis on internal hiring. “Internal applicants outperform external applicants and are more profitable” apparently, while often having a shorter time to fill. Hmm. Dubious but worth considering…
- Rely on insight over instinct
No great surprise with this point, but worth mentioning nonetheless. If you’re developing your candidate profile based on instinct instead of data-driven insight, you’re not likely to be as consistent or accurate. Big data – get on the bandwagon already.
- Emphasise personality fit
A counterpoint to the recommendation above, this article reminds us that personality fit is one of the most important factors in overall performance on the job. While data might be important, make sure to screen your candidates according to cultural fit or you’ll be unlikely to get the best out of them.
The full piece is here for you.
‘How To Improve Quality Of Hire’
Stefan Petroons, Accord Group
Quality of hire, the author writes, is an on-going concern for 2016. While “time to fill” has increased slightly, quality of hire continues to be the most important hiring metric for hiring professionals this year, one which 2/3 of managers believe is handled ineffectively.
The problem, the author observes, is that “most assessments developed to assist in taking hiring decisions only have a limited predictive value” A key point is introduced here: better candidate selection means increasing the quality of the hiring decisions, which is how you will improve quality of hire.
To increase the quality of these hiring decisions it is necessary to introduce a hiring measure that is able to measure the ability of our candidates in contrast to the complexity of the role we’re asking them to do.
This allows us to measure three things:
- Can the candidate understand and address the role’s challenges appropriately?
- Does he or she have the personality traits, talents and drivers that will enable him or her to align with his or her environment? Does the candidate ”fit” the role?
- Does the candidate have the knowledge and experience that will allow him or her to maximize his or her ability fully?
This, the author notes, is where the value of a great recruiter lies: in being able to draw these parallels in order to improve quality of hire.
In all, the most important takeaway from this piece is a shift of attention towards the ability to deal with complexity as the most important contributing factor to improve quality of hire: “Improving quality of hire thus means hiring for mental processing capability”.
This is the biggest factor recruiters and HR factors should take into account if they aspire to improve quality of hire.
‘Recruiter Focus: Using Social Media to Improve Quality of Hire’
Recruitment Buzz
We’ve written numerous times about the importance of social media, so it’s little surprise to see it come up to help improve quality of hire. Without further ado, this piece discusses 3 reasons you should be using social media to improve your quality of hire.
- Networking…
… because there’s no candidate better than the pre-qualified candidate who comes with recommendations. Plus you’re increasing the size of your talent pool. Win/Win.
- Evaluating Cultural Fit…
… because you don’t really know someone until you know how they interact in a casual social environment.
- No pressure hiring…
… because social media allows you to connect to potential candidates in a much more casual, less intimidating way.
This piece then goes on to offer 4 recommendations to help you improve quality of hire the social way.
- Know your target audience…
… because shouting about yourself doesn’t cut it. Find out how your audience talk, and what they talk about.
- Understand your brand/your client’s brand…
… because you can’t present a united front if you don’t know the brand you’re representing. Strong self-image is critical to attracting the right candidates.
- Use hashtags…
…because hashtags help you increase your reach. No more explanation needed.
- Build relationships…
… because social media is not about the quick win. Build rapport and seek longevity. It will pay off.
‘The Minimum Requirement For Improving Quality Of Hire’
Recruiting Blogs
The major point this article makes is this:
“The minimum requirement for improving quality of hire is that the quality of the hire is measured…. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
It might seem basic, but the point is valid. And it’s something many recruitment companies and in-house recruitment teams aren’t, in all honesty, doing very well at. When was the last time you heard how well your hires are doing? Even if you have access to lengthy annual performance reviews, the author argues, that isn’t enough. Annual performance reviews are unwieldy, and are so irregular as to be impossible to implement immediate change.
Instead, the author advocates a basic quality of hire questionnaire, which recruiters should be giving to their hiring managers. This survey should be short and sweet, to encourage participation, and give a quick insight into candidate performance that recruiters can use to inform their strategy moving forwards and improve quality of hire.
The questions the author recommends are as follows:
Does this person still work for you?
(Yes or No)
If you had to do it all over again, would you hire this person for our company?
(Yes or No)
Based on the current performance that you have seen the last couple months, what kind of “Player” is this person?
(A Player, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, F)
Given what I know of this person’s performance, and if it were my money, I would award this person the highest possible compensation increase and bonus.
(1 – Strongly Disagree to 5 – Strongly Agree)
Given what I know of this person’s performance, I would always want him or her on my team.
(1 – Strongly Disagree to 5 – Strongly Agree)
This person is at risk for low performance.
(Yes or No)
This person is ready for promotion today.
(Yes or No)
If you conduct this very brief survey every 3 months and for the lifespan of each candidate you hire, you get invaluable information on how candidates behave and what factors could be influencing their performance.
You could correlate your results here against your source of hire data to find out where your top candidates are coming from. You could correlate performance against time served. You could correlate performance vs. team. Basically, gathering basic data like this can allow you to make data backed improvements to your hiring strategy, in order to improve quality of hire.
‘4 Strategies To Measure Quality Of Hire Effectively’
Talent Culture
In the spirit of the above article, let’s look at some strategies to better measure quality of hire. With 77% of hiring managers admitting they don’t do a good enough job of measuring quality of hire, this is an obvious place to focus…
- Set performance objectives
This seems pretty basic, but you can’t measure performance if you don’t know what good performance looks like. Develop performance objectives when you’re creating the initial job description, so both you and potential candidates know, tangibly, what good performance looks like.
- Predict quality of hire
Using the aforementioned objectives, you can guesstimate before your candidate starts how well you think they’ll perform based on past performance and qualifications. From this guesstimate you can track how well your candidate actually performs on the job and work out where, if anywhere, things are going wrong.
- Talk to your employees
Performance isn’t just based on technical skill or past experience, but on cultural fit which dictates engagement and enjoyment (and therefore effort and performance). Talk to your employees as well as relying on quantitative data based on performance, to find out how their experience of work is correlating with their on the job performance.
- Think big picture
Don’t focus on quality of hire in isolation; look at it in the context of the bigger picture goals of your company (or the company you hire for). Focus on holistic objectives and you can hone your candidate profile in order to hire better quality candidates in the context of these organisational goals.
‘Top 5 Ways To Improve Quality Of Hire’ (Webinar)
HR.com
OK, this is deviating slightly from format but this is an archived webinar that’s really worth listening, giving tips to improve quality of hire. Featuring Bryan Johanson, COO of The Adler Group and Terri Joosten, Sales Executive of HRsmart, the webinar discusses the true cost of hiring bad practice, and looks at ways you can dramatically improve the quality of hire in your company.
The hosts talk listeners through a complete overhaul of the hiring process from attraction to retention, through job description development to interviewing and from the perspectives of HR through to CEO.
You’ll walk away, the webinar promises, with “also many easy to articulate and implement practices to dramatically impact the quality of hire in your organization”
‘Improving Quality of Hire Requires Better Jobs, Better Recruiters and Better Hiring Managers’
Inc.com
The big issue impacting whether we improve quality of hire is that many companies focus on hiring solely active talent, despite active talent making up less than 20% of the overall talent market. These same companies then figure out that hiring passive candidates could be a potential solution to their quality of hire problems… and yet they fail to realise that different sourcing methods are needed.
This piece, another by Lou Adler, focusses on the five fundamental differences recruiters and hiring managers must embrace if they want to hire passive talent, in a bid to improve their quality of hire.
- Passive Candidates Are Not Interested In Lateral Transfers
“The best passive candidates are not interested in considering poorly designed jobs”, Adler writes. We must work harder to create job descriptions that are transparent and are performance-orientated.
- Passive Candidates Need to be Recruited, Not Just Identified
Passive candidates are more difficult to hire. The best way to hire them is to get referrals, which gives a much shorter list of prospects of a much higher quality. This is in stark contrast to recruiting active candidates, which demands a much longer list from which you whittle out the many poorly qualified candidates. It’s a complete reversal of methodology.
- Creating the Career Move Requires a Consultative Process
Adler draws a clear distinction between the “lateral move” and the “career move” – the latter being “a job that offers more satisfaction than the compensation”. Recruiters must convince candidates this new job represents a 30% non-monetary improvement, Adler posits, based on a consultative needs-based sell tailored to each candidate.
- Technology is Just a Starting Point, Not the End Game
Technology facilitates better recruiting; it isn’t better recruiting in and of itself. Adler uses the example of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a powerful tool insofar as it can be mined as a network for referrals, as the highest quality source of hire.
- Make Sure You Have the Right Talent Strategy
The right talent strategy, according to Adler, is one which turns the traditional model on its head. “You can’t use a talent strategy designed to weed out the below average to attract and hire the above average… you need one designed to maximize individual performance”
Read the original on Inc.com now.
Quality of hire is a much-talked about but little understood metric and it’s clear we have quite some way to go before this changes. The major takeaway from almost all of these pieces is that recruiters and HR professionals need to be increasing transparency and objectivity. We should be trying to bring as much data into the hiring process as possible (both qualitative and quantitative) from job description through the entire employee lifespan in order to better understand what makes us, and by extension, our top performers, tick. Only that way can we hope to improve quality of hire.
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Additional Reads:
- How to build the perfect applicant funnel
- Hiring strategies for active vs. hiring strategies for passive candidates
- What is desperation hire and how to avoid it
- What does a successful recruiter look like
- Recruitment on campuses
- How to set objective recruitment goals
- How to be more organized as a recruiter