Quality Check: Do you know who you are hiring?

By Ananya Mukherjee
Singapore

You have the resources, the capital and the technical support to fill in a key staffing position in your organisation such as a director job, but how do you confirm that the  potential or new hire is the ‘right’ talent? How do you ensure that the new employee holding a manager jobwill perform at a high level and deliver more of the business? How do you confirm that the hiring process is the best that you can have and what do you do to plug the gaps when you find them?  The most pertinent question above all is: how do you measure the quality of hire and set new standards for new-hires performance?


Leaning on the adage, “what cannot be measured cannot be improved”, it is imperative for organisations and more importantly, HR to know that  recruitmentas a process in your organisation is both measurable and therefore, subject to further improvisation and improvement.

Although in the past many employers simply relied on paper employment applications and excel spreadsheets to track their hiring process, the  current labour market makes this task impossible to do effectively without using an automated, web-based ATS System, HR gurus observe. But  which is the best way forward? 

Technically speaking, it all depends on the systems, companies and implementations involved, say industry watchers. Whilst one organisation may use a tool that provides a 1-5 grading scale (to be used by hiring managers) to evaluate how a new hire  performs after the first 90 days, others may use a system that includes an early 30-day check up with subsequent feedback at three, six and  nine month intervals.

Needless to say ATS or Applicant Tracking Software isgaining popularity amongst employers, especially those that are hiring at an exponential  rate across geographies today. The software allows organisations to maintain a database of applicants and job information. Rather than  browsing through thousands of resumes, human resource managers and recruiters use this information to find matches between openings and  applicants. The value of this information is enhanced since it can be stored and retrieved electronically. However, be warned, this is not a fool  proof method of selection, since you run into the risk of automatically discarding potential talent whose resumes do not perfectly match with the  predetermined profiles. 

Furthermore, as part of the metrics initiative, you may gather data on performance, retention, hiring-manager surveys and productivity. In addition,  psychometric testing also could help in accessing the potentials of a new hire. By pre-screening applicants on personality, experience,  critical-thinking and problem-solving, some organisations claim to have cut turnover by almost 30%. 

Some employers have already begun empowering HR and recruiters with on-screen, dashboard capabilities to view recruiter scorecards that  evaluate how recruiters perform on a checklist of metrics. These include measurements linked with quality of hires. 

Employers can then correlate high performers and their sources and determine where to find the best fit for the job position. 

A bad hire is costly; not only in terms of the recruitment expenses, but also with regards to lost time, low quality and compromised productivity. Hence, getting it right at the very start is critically important to business. After all, only a right talent at the right place can change or improve  business bottom- lines. 

MEASURING THE PREDICTORS OF JOB SUCCESS
01/ Set Key Performance Indicators or KPIs to measure the quality of hire
02/ Set up a process and system to measure against these KPIs
03/ Analyse these numbers
04/ Measure the quality of hire and recalibrate periodically
05/ Measure the hiring manager surveys, time to productivity and retention


(The article was first published in the Headhunt magazine, Singapore)