How to Improve Quality of Hire

Hiring the right employees is fundamental to your business's success. You spend a lot of time and resources in the hiring process. But are you getting the returns you expect? High turnover rates, long training periods, and poor performance might be signs that it’s time to improve the quality of hire. Let’s delve into what improving quality of hire means and why it’s crucial for your organisation.

Understanding the quality of hire can help you refine your recruitment strategies, save time, and drive long-term business success. By boosting the effectiveness of your hiring process, you can increase productivity, morale, and retention in your team.

Understanding Quality of Hire

What is Quality of Hire?

Quality of hire refers to the value a new employee brings to your organisation over a specific period. It includes various factors such as job performance, engagement, cultural fit, and retention rates. Essentially, it measures how well new hires meet or exceed the expectations set during the recruitment process.

To quantify the quality of hire, you can use KPIs such as time to productivity, performance ratings, and retention rates within the first six months. Combining these metrics provides a clearer picture of hiring success.

Why is Quality of Hire important?

Investing in the quality of hire improves overall business outcomes. High-quality hires are more likely to excel in their roles, contribute to team morale, and stay with the company longer, reducing recruitment and training costs. They can also quickly adapt, drive innovation, and help you maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Moreover, focusing on quality over quantity in hiring reduces the chances of making poor recruitment choices that could harm your business. In the long run, a strong focus on hiring quality talent will elevate your company's reputation, making it easier to attract top professionals.

5 Strategies to Improve Quality of Hire

1. Define clear job descriptions

To improve the quality of hires, start by defining clear expectations in your job descriptions. Write a detailed and specific job description that outlines the necessary skills, experience, and qualifications. This includes not only the hard skills but also the soft skills you value. Use bullet points to list the key responsibilities and expectations for the role. This helps potential candidates understand exactly what is required and assess if they are a right fit.

Additionally, include information about the company and team. Candidates should know about any expectations around collaboration, communication styles, or company values. Doing this ensures that those who apply are already aligned with your company expectations, reducing the likelihood of hiring mismatches.

2. Interviewer training and alignment

Train your interviewers to ensure they are aligned in what to look for in candidates. Interviewer training should cover both technical and soft skills assessments. Provide a structured interview guide with standardised questions and scoring metrics to ensure consistency across interviews. This helps in evaluating candidates uniformly and removes personal biases from the selection process.

Encourage regular debriefing sessions among interviewers to share insights and ensure alignment. These sessions can help your team understand what qualities and experiences are being prioritised, making the decision-making process more collaborative and comprehensive. Consider role-playing exercises or mock interviews as part of interviewer training to continually refine their skills.

3. Accurate candidate assessment

To conduct thorough and accurate candidate assessments you need a clear plan, specifically an “Interview Plan”. This sets out how many interviews each candidate will need to complete, who’ll run those interviews and what the candidate will be assessed on. When creating an interview plan, you should align it with the desired skills and behaviours you require from the role (at that seniority level). Have a read of our Job Leveling Matrix guide to see how you can document what’s required for each level of a role. This is a great starting point for your interview plan, it also makes sure you’re assessing people for the correct level.

Once you’ve got your plan set up, you want to think about the questions you’re asking and how long you want to spend on them. Evidenced has a structured interview builder which lets you build your interview plan with sections, timing and questions so each interview is run in exactly the same way. This means each candidate is assessed in the same way (which is critical to reduce bias).

To ensure the candidate is assessed fully, you need to make sure your interviewers aren’t distracted, this can happen when they’re taking lots of notes. Interviews often won’t flow well and the interviewer can miss things that the candidate has said. Or worse, they don’t ask important follow up questions to clarify details. Evidenced records and transcribes your interviews, so you don’t have to take notes, we also give you the ability to bookmark key moments during the interview. This allows you to easily recap those moments after the candidate has gone. This means each candidate’s answers get a thorough review.

The final part of the assessment is coming to a decision that is bias-free. This means reviewing and writing your hiring conclusion without seeing what other interviewers have concluded themselves. This is the default behaviour of the Evidenced platform, ensuring hiring decisions are always bias-free.

4. Make quality of hire a shared responsibility

Quality of hire should be a shared responsibility across your organisation. Engage various departments to give input on job descriptions and hiring criteria. Make sure that HR, team leaders, and department heads are all aligned on the standards for quality hires. This helps create a holistic understanding of what qualities are crucial for success in your organisation.

Foster a culture where everyone feels responsible for bringing in the best talent. This can be achieved by introducing an employee referral programme, where employees are incentivised to recommend qualified candidates. Regularly communicate the impact good hires have on the business to keep everyone motivated and engaged in the recruitment process.

5. Build a strong onboarding process

A strong onboarding process is crucial to ensuring the long-term success of new hires. An effective onboarding should include clear orientation programmes, mentoring, and training sessions. Help new employees understand their roles, the tools they will use, and who to go to for help. This will ensure they start adding value as soon as possible.

Ensure that the onboarding programme extends beyond the first week. Sustain it over the first few months with periodic check-ins and feedback sessions. This helps new hires feel welcomed, supported and able to integrate seamlessly into the team. Developing a comprehensive onboarding plan can boost employee satisfaction and retention significantly.

With the right strategies, you can significantly improve the quality of your hires, helping to drive your organisation forward and ensure long-term success. Effective recruitment is not just about filling a position but finding the best person for the role and your company.