Let’s face it. Quality of Hire might just be the metric to rule them all (at least for TA). It could be that one metric, forged in the fires of mount doom, to validate and rule them all.
But it’s not. Not even close.
So what are we doing wrong?
Is it about adding more metrics to craft a super-metric? What if we combine turnover, retention, ramp-up time, and then throw in organizational citizenship behaviors, leadership, goals, and KPIs? That might get us there! Oh, and let’s not forget OKRs; because, clearly, everyone needs more OKRs to truly understand Quality of Hire.
The pitfalls of Quality of Hire are numerous. But they all start and end with the elephant in the room: What is performance?
So if we haven’t yet nailed what Quality of Hire should really measure, where should we start?
Breaking it Down
The hiring process has several goals, but one outshines the rest: predicting future job performance.
The problem is that job performance isn’t as straightforward as we’d like it to be. Context, leadership, clarity of role, purpose, and mission all play crucial roles in determining performance.
In conversations with countless leaders, it’s clear that many companies lack a precise definition of what performance means in their workplace.
So let’s take a step back and examine how the hiring process attempts to predict future job performance. Here, we need to turn to research and best practices.
Everyone aims to predict whether someone will perform, but we know that an unstructured, intuition-driven approach does a poor job of it. A structured hiring process, on the other hand, holds more promise in predicting job performance; it requires identifying critical abilities and behaviors to be evaluated throughout the hiring journey.
The focus of the hiring process, then, should be to evaluate these identified abilities and behaviors in a structured, data-driven way. The hiring process isn’t aiming to evaluate overall performance or the unknown factors that might arise post-hire. Its goal is to assess the specific critical abilities and behaviors.
Redefining Quality of Hire
So, if we circle back to what Quality of Hire should measure, the answer becomes clearer.
Quality of Hire should evaluate how effectively the hiring process measured those critical abilities and behaviors.
Everything else—other abilities, leadership quality, work environment, goals, and tools—will influence overall performance. But if we focus on measuring Quality of Hire based on the same abilities and behaviors assessed in the hiring process, we’ll have a metric that:
- Reflects our ability to predict those specific abilities and behaviors.
- Provides insights into how well we’re identifying the critical abilities and behaviors needed for roles.
- Indicates whether leadership, goals, or internal tools are enabling or hindering performance.
Conclusion: One Step Closer to the Holy Grail of TA
This Quality of Hire metric won’t turn you into the dark lord, nor will it be the ultimate metric. But by using a tool like Asaya Labs—which allows you to continuously measure abilities and behaviors through automated peer evaluations—you’ll have a metric that feeds valuable data back into your hiring process. And while you may not be wielding supreme power, you’ll be one step closer to finding the Holy Grail of TA.