3 Tools to Improve the Quality of Hires

by Andrew LaCivita on July 22nd, 2010

As a first step to improving the quality of your hires, you must collect the metrics. Be reasonable, but collect them. There are three tools that will make the difference. The key driver is knowing this information will be collected and measured and that people will be managed and compensated by the results.

Hiring Manager Survey – Make sure the hiring managers fill these out for each recruiter. Some of the core metrics that should be captured in the survey are new hire quality, actual vs. contracted time-to-start,customer satisfaction, and efficiency. (Please note that the actual vs. contracted time-to-start is different than time-to-fill. Time-to-fill is how long it takes to find the new employee. This isn’t necessarily the key metric in improving hiring official satisfaction or improving the quality of your hires. The more telling indicator is the variance between the time the recruiter indicated it would take to find the individual and the actual amount of time it took.)

Attrition Rate (First Year) – How many of your employees left within the first year.

Performance (Macro Level)– Have the hiring official rate the new employee at 90 & 180 days. Aggregate the performance for all employees the recruiter hired.

These tools may seem simple. Few companies, however, succeed in gathering this data and fewer still compensate their recruiters on it. Taking steps to evaluate the quality of hires and improve hiring satisfaction will go a long way to improving your company’s ability to hire top talent. Getting the hiring officials to want to be more actively engaged will really make the difference.

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From → IT Exec, Recruiting, VMS

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Seema Desaipermalink

Add-on “The 3 keys to improving your quality of hire”
1) Know what you need: one of the primary complaints of Recruiters and Agencies is that often times, the hiring manager/HR doesn’t really know what they need – the job description is vague or lacking, and feedback makes the job feel like a moving target. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, how do you know when you’ve found it?! Know what you’re looking for before you begin the hunt!

2) Use the experts: HR Managers and Hiring managers have other jobs besides staffing! We all agree it’s important (my opinion is that hiring the right people is the single most important decision a company can make), but often, HR and Hiring managers can’t devote the time needed to find really quality candidates. So they end up slapping a job on some job board and have to take the time to filter through hundreds of responses. Know that your time is better spent doing more strategic, revenue generating things, and let the expert Sourcers, Recruiters and agencies do the searching for you! Getting the right person in the seat should be worth the Placement Fee you will end up paying.

3) Hire the personality: The resume and list of skills and experience is only 1/2 the story! Any smart and motivated person can learn the right set of skills for a job. Finding the right personality though is the key to a quality hire. Take your time in interviews. Know what you’re interviewing for and what kind of person you’re looking for. Have at least two people check for behavioral/cultural fit. Once you have a few of the right candidates in-hand, do your background checks and reference checks. Look at their social network presence to see if you can gain any insight into the type of person you’re hiring.