Quality of hire can be one of the more frustrating metrics for talent acquisition professionals. In 80% of companies, it’s considered a recruiting metric rather than a hiring metric, yet it’s often defined by post-hire measures like hiring manager satisfaction and first-year retention. How can you gain more control over quality of hire? The solution is data-driven hiring that leverages predictive talent analytics.
Eliminate the disconnect
If quality of hire is an ongoing challenge for your team, part of the problem could be a vague definition of the metric. A recent study by Aptitude Research indicates that more than half of companies (52%) use hiring manager satisfaction to track quality of hire. There’s no question that it’s a critical aspect of quality of hire, but it tends to be highly subjective, even biased. So, a more solid definition is one step in making quality of hire a more meaningful metric.
A disconnect in the data used for hiring decisions could be a larger part of the problem. What types of data are you using for hiring decisions? Typically, it’s data collected in screening, assessments, and interviews. Lately, companies have added candidate feedback to the process. These pre-hire metrics are important, but if they are not connected to post-hire metrics such as first-year performance, first-year retention, and yes, hiring manager satisfaction, how can hiring teams understand what employee success looks like in candidates before hiring? The use of talent analytics in a science-based virtual hiring platform like Modern Hire eliminates that disconnect.
How talent analytics should work
A predictive talent analytics system requires the ongoing collection of pre-hire candidate data and post-hire employee performance and retention data. The Modern Hire platform takes care of the pre-hire data collection through:
- Pre-employment assessments. Modern Hire’s Virtual Job Tryout™ offers up job simulations and job-related exercises to gather data on candidates’ core competencies in the role. Though Virtual Job Tryouts are specific to the role, some core competencies are common to many roles, such as adapt to change, manages priorities, and drives for results. Virtual Job Tryouts use talent analytics to accurately predict a candidate’s future success in that role, even if the candidate has no experience in the role. That predictive power is a critical hiring advantage for organizations using Modern Hire’s platform during the pandemic since many roles are brand-new, and many job seekers are viable candidates for a position despite lack of specific experience.
- On-demand interviews. Modern Hire on-demand interviews give your team an efficient tool for developing deeper insight into candidates at scale. Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques integrated into the platform can accurately analyze data from on-demand interviews, even though that data is unstructured. This is another key advantage for Modern Hire clients – the ability to expand the scope of their talent analytics to interview responses.
Modern Hire works with recruiting teams to gain accurate, consistent post-hire data in their organization. Our industrial-organizational (I-O) scientists use the post-hire data to adjust the pre-hire assessments so they can predict candidates’ future success and the likelihood of turnover with a high degree of accuracy.
It’s a system grounded in science that works. One Modern Hire client, an international chain of convenience stores, achieved a 14% improvement in new Store Manager performance and a 12% increase in new Store Manager retention by using a Virtual Job Tryout. Read more. Another client, the nationally known Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, began using Modern Hire’s platform as part of its best practices hiring approach. Now its hiring managers only spend time with the most viable candidates.
“Even though my recruiters are not hands-on with the patients, they still feel a great sense of responsibility and accomplishment by bringing forth the right talent for Cincinnati Children’s,” says the hospital’s Senior Director of Employment. “It’s their way of having a direct impact on the quality of care our children receive. Modern Hire helps us accomplish that.”
Redefining quality of hire in your organization
There are some tactics you can use to gain insight into defining quality of hire in your organization:
- Explore “success:” Do some research into what makes an employee successful in a role and track the data that helps inform that success. Remember that prior experience and education are not always indicators of success.
- Work with your hiring managers: Closer collaboration can improve quality of hire by setting up clear expectations about employee success and ensuring hiring managers get the data they need to make sound hiring decisions.
- Check-in with new hires: There’s often a link between employee satisfaction and employee success. During a new employee’s first year, check-in with that person often to learn more about their success and satisfaction.
Also, consider working with a talent analytics partner like Modern Hire. The Aptitude Research study found more than half of companies that have improved their quality of hire say investing in the right technology and using data to make hiring decisions were essential to their success. Get started by requesting a Modern Hire demo today.