7 Easy Ways to Improve Quality of Hire

Quality of hire is an important measure in any hiring process. Great hires are productive, add value to the team, and aren’t engaging in harmful misconduct. On the other hand, low-quality hires perform poorly, detract from the team goals, and reduce the business bottom line. It’s not surprising that quality of hire is a top concern of talent teams and organizations in 2023.

So, what can companies do to improve quality of hire? In this article, you will learn the strategies and best practices that talent acquisition experts use to measure and improve quality when hiring. We broke down the tips and tricks into 7 easy steps that you can use to improve quality of hire in your own organization today.

We’ll dive in starting with step #1.

#1. Understand Who Defines Quality of Hire for the Role

At the very beginning of each hiring process, it’s important for the hiring team to get on the same page about what will make a good-quality hire. In a hiring process with lots of stakeholders, that may start with understanding who will define what quality of hire looks like for the role.

Hiring managers usually have final say on who gets hired. But, talent experts recommend that hiring managers and recruiting teams work together to define quality of hire from both job and company perspectives. On ERE’s Improving Quality of Hire by Evaluating Candidate Behavior webinar, HR and recruiting expert, Freesia Chen, shares, “At Fama, there is no single decision maker in our hiring process.” She explains that recruiters can assess quality of hire from an organizational lens and culture perspective and hiring managers are the subject matter experts for the role and can assess quality from a job perspective.

Moving forward with the understanding that quality of hire will be defined by both the recruiting professional and hiring manager, companies can create a comprehensive definition of quality of hire.

#2. Define Quality of Hire for the Role

Understanding that different people within a hiring team will define different aspects of quality of hire is important. But, it’s also critical to come together and agree on a single definition of quality of hire that can be used throughout the hiring process to find, screen, and select the best candidate.

The definition may include:

Skills required to make a candidate successful in the role
Experience in critical aspects of the job
Having the right required credentials
Key behavioral traits that contribute to success
Not engaging in harmful misconduct
And more based on your company culture and industry

With these criteria in mind, hiring teams can seek out candidates and screen applicants that have the right skills, experiences, credentials, and behaviors to be successful in the role and on the team.

#3. Measure Quality of Hire

In order to improve quality of hire, it’s important to measure it. Because there are so many different definitions of quality, many organizations struggle to measure it. In fact, only 32% of organizations feel they effectively measure quality of hire.

Companies can measure quality of hire by tracking a combination of metrics including cost per hire, job performance, tenure, and more. If you want some guidance on how other companies are measuring quality of hire, this article includes some helpful formulas and tips.

#4. Structured Interviews

After an agreed upon definition of quality of hire and an understanding of how it will be measured, it’s important to assess all candidates with consistency to ensure fairness, reduce bias, and make the best hiring decision. Structured interviews are a great way to ensure this consistency and fairness during this critical evaluation period.

Structured interviews are interviews in which all the candidates are asked the same questions, in the same order, and usually by the same people. Then, the interviewers use the same rubric or candidate feedback forms to deliver the feedback internally consistently across candidates. This process allows each decision influencer or decision maker to compare answers easily. It also ensures interviewers don’t ask illegal interview questions and create a poor candidate experience.

#5. Diversified Interview Panels

Another tactic companies can use to consistently and fairly assess quality of hire is to have a diverse group of people interviewing candidates. This is a great way to gain several perspectives on each candidate, show candidates how diverse the organization is (which is something nearly 90% of candidates care about), and also allows the hiring team to see how candidates treat interviewers of different backgrounds. If a candidate is rude to women employees but nice to the men employees, that may be a great indicator of potential discrimination and damaging misconduct.

#6. Evaluate Candidate Behaviors

In addition to getting to know candidates from a job responsibility and duty perspective, evaluating candidate behaviors can tell a lot about how they will work within the team, department, company, and even with clients and external business stakeholders.

In the webinar from ERE mentioned earlier, recruiting expert, Keirsten Greggs, discusses the importance of evaluating candidate behaviors. She recommends specifically looking for things like: Does the candidate respond to emails timely? Do they send thank you notes? Are they polite or rude to each person they interact with? “Small interactions can tell a lot about candidates,” Greggs notes. Understanding how candidates communicate, treat other people, and behave can help the hiring team look for candidates that can do the job and maximize the value for the team and organization.

#7. Build a Robust Pre-Screening Tech Stack

Screening is a great place for technology to assist recruiters and improve hiring outcomes. This is because technology can process a large amount of information very quickly – much faster than people can. Technology solutions like skills-based assessments, background checks, and online screening solutions can assist hiring teams during the pre-employment screening process to help evaluate and select the best candidate.

Skills tests are basic exams that show whether candidates can do the basic elements of the job. This may include a typing test or a driving exam to ensure the candidate has the skills they claim to have.

Background checks verify that candidates are who they say they are, have the education and credentials they claim to have, and can surface court records of criminal activity. Ensuring the candidate is the person they claim to be is an important security and safety measure.

Picking up where the background check leaves off, online screening reviews a candidate’s every day behavior specifically for instances of workplace misconduct. These solutions are critical for ensuring a safe and inclusive workplace, and have uncovered candidates with significant violations like violence, threats, harassment, theft, and more, before they are hired to ensure companies only hire the best-quality candidates.

Enhancing quality of hire is one of the top priorities of talent teams today. It’s not surprising why – good-quality candidates perform their job well, are enjoyable to work with, and add value to the organization.

In the past, improving quality of hire may have felt like an impossible task. But, these 7 strategies and technologies can make it a whole lot easier. These best practices help hiring teams differentiate between qualified candidates and quality candidates, which may not be the same thing, so you can hire the best person for the job, for the team, and for the organization.

If you have any questions about how online screening can help you improve your hiring outcomes, connect with us here now.