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It’s no secret that a good hiring process can help your organization in multiple ways. Recruiting the best people can enhance your overall productivity, retention rates, and reduce turnover costs.
Are you or your HR team looking for techniques to improve the quality of recruiting and hiring practices at your organization? This article will walk you through some such techniques backed by research.
According to industry experts, the quality of hire measures the effectiveness of the recruiting process. It is, in fact, the value a new hire contributes to your overall success in terms of their performance and tenure. Besides measuring the individual quality of hire, it helps you analyze the quality of your organization’s recruiting function.
The minimum reference point for a quality hire is that the value a person creates while being employed is greater than the cost of recruiting them. It has been proven that a top-performing employee generates 4x the output of an average employee.
Research has found that effective measurement of quality of hire entails the calculation of both pre-hire and post-hire quality. Pre-hire quality depends on factors such as new-hire attrition, time-to-hire, candidate assessment scores, etc. while post-hire quality is attributed to aspects like the employee’s performance and/or productivity measurements, and peer rankings.
Normally, when it comes to measuring the quality of hire, it’s not a “one-size-fits-all” metric since the priorities vary from one business to other. However, as per LinkedIn reports, the top three ways to measure the quality of hire are:
Other common metrics include ramp-up time, an employee’s time to full productivity; job performance, based on supervisor’s performance ratings or objective data like sales; employee engagement, based on the new hire’s self-ratings; and cultural fit.
Here are the nine best ways that help you advance the quality of hire.
The first step to improving the quality of hire is to measure your current score. Once it’s done, you can set goals for improvement accordingly. You can plan what you want to achieve in six months, one year, or any period. Devising a plan will help you keep track of your activities and your results.
According to LinkedIn research, 61% of hiring managers say recruiters have only a low to moderate understanding of the jobs they recruit for. By working closely with the hiring managers, you can define the role and what the job qualifications are. Doing so would increase the probability of finding the right candidate for the position.
Before hiring a candidate, you need to give a clear overview of the company and the job role. Accurate job postings and detailed job descriptions will help you choose candidates who are a solid fit for your business. With the help of technology, you can build a positive company brand and online reputation. Make a note of the following points:
• To write better job descriptions, The Wall Street Journal emphasizes using the Needs-Supplies approach, which focuses on what the company can do for the candidate in contrast to the Demands-Abilities approach, which focuses on what the company expects from the candidate. By focusing on what your company can do for potential employees, and you'll attract candidates who better fit your needs.
• Avoid unnecessary jargon on your job advertisements. Promote the role and your brand in simple terms.
• Use unbiased language. Research has found that 60% of businesses show significant male bias in their job ads.
• Anonymize applications. Using recruitment technology to anonymize applications helps eradicate unconscious bias.
• Keep an eye on your reviews on websites such as Glassdoor. Studies reveal that 86% of Glassdoor users read company reviews and ratings before deciding to apply for a job.
Conducting job interviews helps employers figure out whether the candidate has the skills and cultural fit to fill the position. A recent Forbes article highlights that 89% of hiring failures are due to poor culture fit. To avoid this, you need to draft a set of questions for each of the skills and core competencies your new hire should possess. Doing this would ensure you an objective hiring process to follow.
You may prepare behavioral and performance-based questions for each role to learn more about how your candidates have performed in the past. SHRM advocates hiring practices such as choosing interview questions targeting behaviors that complement the organization's vision, mission, and values statements, and conducting a cultural fit interview by asking questions that prompt comments about organizational values.
A lot of companies have started leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make smarter hiring decisions. Experts suggest that AI allows recruiters to better control their ATS, shortlist more accurately, screen resumes with more fairness, improve job advertising, and predict future staffing needs. AI not only offers you a more efficient recruiting process but also saves you a great deal of time.
HR experts opine that the way you welcome your new hires and acclimate them into your company has a huge impact on employee engagement and productivity. Onboarding offers a platform for the new employees to learn the value system, norms, and desired organizational behaviors. A systematic onboarding process helps new hires to become accustomed to their roles and teams, in addition to letting them gain a better understanding of the job expectations.
SHRM discloses that 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for at least three years if they have had a positive onboarding experience. It’s high time organizations understood that an all-inclusive onboarding process is a win-win for the employees and employers.
Your recruiting team should be able to collect and have access to pre-hire and post-hire data. The former includes the scores on psychometric assessments, resumes, job preview tests, and interviews. The latter takes into account both subjective data such as managers’ satisfaction ratings and new hires’ engagement self-ratings, and objective data such as days to full productivity, number of promotions, and tenure.
Today, a vast majority of businesses rely exclusively on performance reviews to measure the quality of hire. However, it should be realized that performance reviews can be misleading to standardize the results due to their subjectivity.
A robust employee referral program is one of the fastest ways to improve the quality of hire. Employee referrals have proved to reduce time-to-hire and cost per hire. 88% of businesses believe referrals are the best source for top-quality hires. Referral hires also typically stay longer and work harder.
After a definite period, make sure you review the results of your quality of hire improvement program. The evaluation will provide you an idea of the areas that have improved and the ones that need further effort. Several experts suggest conducting annual reviews to enhance the impact.
Hiring new talent that brings value to your organization is not as simple as reviewing resumes and conducting interviews. Employers must focus on improving strategic metrics like quality of hire to build a recruitment process that sincerely expands business outcomes. Beyond ranking and rating your new hires, the methods listed above will help you future-proof your business by devising a strategy to consistently hire the best.
OnBlick is a compliance software that also offers you a hassle-free onboarding experience. With the help of OnBlick ESS, your employees can access their personal and work-related information, and manage the tasks. Learn how OnBlick streamlines your HR processes, upgrades employee experience, and opens the door to new possibilities.
