The talent war is heating up making it is even more important than ever before to hire candidates effectively, but hiring quality candidates is more complex than I described in the rule of thirds. Measuring quality of hire is somewhat elusive, but necessary to make sure all of your different hiring programs are working properly. If over the years you’ve noticed your quality of hire decreasing, we’ve come up with three no-fail solutions that are guaranteed to help your company get back on track in increasing your quality of hire:
Accurate Position and Job Descriptions: The job description assists in helping define the source of candidates for a certain position. Instead of creating a list of skills and experience a candidate must have to fill a specific job, define the actual work the new person needs to do in terms of performance. Sourcing top candidates isn’t about knowing if someone is proficient in Microsoft Word, it’s more about defining performance objectives and criteria that need to be fulfilled to meet your company’s overall goals. In doing so, each candidate that applies will know exactly the quality of work required as well as the skills needed to perform that work.
No Spin Company Information and Resources: Candidates want to know the truth about the company upfront and not learn about it a month down the road. I’ve had a job where the company President sold the job to be the best workplace ever. I quickly found out that the company wasn’t as good as it seemed and after a few months I was already back looking for a new job. Not only did this decrease my productivity because I was essentially lied to during the initial interview, but it looks horrible on a company that distorts information to hire a candidate. It’s better to be upfront with a candidate about the types of resources that your company has in order to protect your investment.
Focus on Talent Pipelines and Long Term Recruiting Strategies: One of the most important and crucial ways that’ll boost your quality of hire is to invest in long-term solutions over short-term fixes. When a company see numbers drop, they usually focus more on the "here and now" than on what is going to happen 2-3 years down the road, much less 5-10 years. Talent Pipelines allow recruiters to understand where candidates are coming from and what is working. Your quality of hire may suffer from the fact that you simply don't know where you’re losing specific candidates. Do they fill out part of the job application, but quit halfway through? Does it take to long for a recruiter to follow-up with specific job applicants? Each of these questions can be answered if you’re monitoring your actual talent pipeline.
Follow these three no-fail solutions and your quality of hire is bound to be on the increase. Obviously there are thousands of actions a company can take to help quality of hire, but these solutions offer not only a good foundation, but also best practices to follow when dealing with candidates and quality of hire.
What does your company do to help increase quality of hire?
Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs.
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