A Research ebook by: The Recruiter s Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire
The Recruiting Metric You Can t Ignore We know that data drives recruitment success but there are a lot of different metrics to consider. Which one do organizations think matters most? Quality of hire. After all, hiring the right people is what recruitment is all about. It s even easier to understand why quality of hire has emerged as the most valued recruiting metric given that hiring managers say they consider 1 in 5 of their employees to be a bad hire or regretted decision.¹ So we know quality of hire is important, but how do recruiters go about improving it? 39% of employers agree that quality of hire is the most valuable metric for gauging recruitment success. Approximately 30% of small to mid-size businesses said that improving quality of hire would have the most significant impact on their business in 2016.2 ¹ CEB https://www.cebglobal.com/human-resources/recruiting/quality-of-hire.html 2 LinkedIn Global Recruiting Trends 2016 https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/grt16_globalrecruiting_100815.pdf 2
Manage Your Measurement 85% that of companies that measure quality of hire agree it positively impacts hiring quality, and almost half believe that measuring this metric can improve quality of hire by more than 25%.3 Getting Started Though companies understand the importance of quality of hire, they re much less confident in their ability to quantify and measure it. And without that foundation, knowing if and how quality of hire improves is difficult. So here s the thing: there is no concrete formula for calculating quality of hire. It s often dependent on an organization s unique understanding of what quality means. That being said, your quality of hire formula should be clearly defined, and should pull in a variety of other recruitment metrics, such as: Annual new hire turnover rate Average time to complete onboarding objectives Number of candidates interviewed per position New hire job performance 3 Hudson RPO and HRO Today Institute http://hudsonrpo.com/portals/rpo/documents/quality-of-hire-report.pdf 3
Manage Your Measurement Only 33% of respondents feel that their methodologies for measuring quality of hire were strong, and only 5% said it was best-in-class. Only 6% of HR departments believe they are excellent in data analytics to begin with. 4 LinkedIn Global Hiring Trends 2016 https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/grt16_globalrecruiting_100815.pdf 5 Deloitte, Global Human Capital Trends 2015 http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/deloitte/at/documents/human-capital/hc-trends-2015.pdf 4
How to Take (Quality) Control 5
LEVEL 1 Define What You re Looking For and Share that with Job Seekers After establishing a baseline for how to measure quality of hire, determine what quality means for each position you recruit for, and combine that definition with your organization s understanding of cultural fit. Best-in-Class organizations are more than twice as likely to define their quality of hire compared to all other companies. Aberdeen Group Step 1: Align with Hiring Managers Make it easy for hiring managers to share what they re looking for by giving them the ability to write and edit job descriptions, view your current applicant pool, and leave detailed comments about candidates all within the same system. Step 2: Identify Cultural Fit Criteria 80% of managers named cultural fit as a top priority to consider when hiring a new employee.⁶ And icims finds that employees that are a strong cultural fit are more productive and stay longer.7 Take whatever defines the spirit of your company and translate that to desired employee characteristics. Does your workforce embody innovation? A nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic? Step 3: Communicate Both with Candidates Attract best-fit candidates by making it clear what you re looking for. Tailor recruitment materials to reflect job-specific qualifications and your unique company culture. The icims Talent Platform makes it easy for recruiters to do so on a consistent basis with editing tools to configure job postings, the ability to add photos and videos, and branded career portals. ⁶ Cubiks, International Study on Job and Culture Fit http://www.cubiks.co.uk/ 7 icims Hiring Insights 6
LEVEL 2 Optimize the Screening Process The unfortunate reality is that 50-75% of applicants aren t qualified for the jobs they apply for, across all job classifications.8 In fact, 21% of companies said their bad hiring decisions were the result of becoming familiar enough with candidates skills prior to hire.9 What to Do Adjust Screening Questions on a Per-Job Basis Talent acquisition technology should make it possible for recruiters to edit and associate different applicant screening questions for different job openings, to ensure that filtering is as accurate as possible (and not standard across the board). The ability to determine which questions knock out applicants from the pool is also key to find the right people, faster. Ask for a Video Cover Letter Request that a candidate submit a video cover letter at the second or third stage of screening. With a basic prompt, give candidates the opportunity to volunteer additional information about their skills, experiences, and competencies. This gives recruiters a better sense of candidate fit, without the time and expense of an onsite interview. Turn to Leading Assessment Providers Screening assessments are a great way for recruiters to determine whether or not an applicant has needed skills. At icims, we partner with over a dozen leading assessment providers, so that our customers can access assessment results right within a candidate s profile. 8. Talent Board http://www.thetalentboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/2015_nam_talent_board_candidate_experience_research_report_final_160208.pdf 9. CareerBuilder http://www.checkster.com/blog/why-quality-of-hire-is-hrs-most-important-metric 7
LEVEL 3 Get the Full Picture: Acquiring a Holistic View of Candidates Make more informed decisions with the ability to access and consider all pertinent information about candidates easily. Recruiting processes that are disparate, such as those that might house resumes, cover letters, videos, and background check forms in different places, can stand in the way of that goal. Centralized Candidate Profiles Opt for an applicant tracking system with profiles that compile and organize all available information about a candidate in one spot. Split-Screen Views With a split-screen view of a candidate profile, review a candidate s resume and other skills information on one side of the screen while pulling up supporting information on the other, like a recording of their video cover letter or background screening results. Skills Keyword Searches When candidate resumes are tagged by keywords, recruiters can search for candidates in their system by a specific skill and generate a results list that ranks candidates by how prevalent that skill is on their resume. 8
LEVEL 4 Monitor and Adjust Sourcing Strategies Where do your organization s best employees come from? Job boards? LinkedIn job postings? And, does the answer to this question change when you take a look at different departments within your organization? Tracking sourcing channel performance can arm recruiters with some pretty valuable information. When recruiters know where their best candidates come from, they re able to: Fill positions faster Find more people with the right skills Spend money, time, and resources more wisely Employee Referrals are the Strongest Source of Hire Employee referrals are a source of hire not to be overlooked. icims Hire Expectations Institute finds that 40% of employers hire their staff from employee referrals and CareerBuilder finds that 88% of employers rate employee referrals above all other sources of hire. Reporting Keep a pulse on sourcing channels with easy to generate (and interpret) sourcing reports. The icims Talent Platform, for example, gives users the ability to view standard and configured sourcing channel reports in real-time, right from their own reporting dashboard. We Recommend: The Hired Candidate Source Report Quickly identify where all hired candidates were sourced by creating a Hired Candidate Source Report in the icims Talent Platform. Use this to see the source of each of your new hires, and determine the best place to look for future candidates. 9
LEVEL 5 Clearly Define New Hire Objectives (and Supply Needed Resources) Improving quality of hire doesn t stop at the recruitment process. How a new hire is welcomed into the organization can influence their success, too. 77% of new hires who hit their first performance milestone had formal onboarding training.10 What to Do Benefit from a New Hire Onboarding Portal Give new hires access to a unique onboarding portal that houses resources about policies, company culture, process documents, and forms to be completed (like I-9s). Keep New Hires on Track Be clear about what s expected of a new hire. Onboarding software that can automatically assign role-specific tasks to new hires, as well as set due dates, send reminder emails, and record completion, is a great way to communicate expectations efficiently. When Asked about Onboarding 48% of employees said they would like to customize training for their job function, 47% wanted the freedom to go through at their own pace, and 45% listed being able to interact with other learners as important.11 10 Urban Bound http://www.urbanbound.com/blog/onboarding-infographic-statistics 11 Entrepreneur https:/www.entrepreneur.com/article/269884 10
Final Thoughts Building a workforce of qualified professionals is a top concern of business leaders, and though perhaps the most subjective of all recruiting metrics, there s no doubt that quality of hire is a critical part of addressing this concern.12 HR must therefore find ways to define, measure, and execute on a strategy to improve quality of hire if they hope to maintain their competitive edge. With the right talent acquisition technology, the power to attract, screen, and onboard the most qualified candidates in other words, build that talented workforce is increased. 12 PricewaterhouseCooper http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/people-organisation/publications/ceosurvey-talent-challenge.html 11
How icims Can Help icims is the leading provider of talent acquisition solutions that help businesses win the war for top talent. icims empowers companies to manage their entire hiring process within the industry s most robust Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Built on the foundation of a best-to-market talent acquisition software suite, icims PaaS framework, UNIFi, allows employers to expand the capabilities of their core talent acquisition technology by integrating with the largest partner ecosystem in talent acquisition to help them attract, find, screen, and manage candidates. Offering scalable, easy-to-use solutions that are backed by award-winning customer service, icims supports more than 3,200 contracted customers and is one of the largest and fastest-growing talent acquisition solution providers. Connect with icims on social media! 12