A Research eBook by:

The Recruiters Blueprint

For Better Quality of Hire
2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.
2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Recruiting Metric You Cant Ignore

We know that data drives recruitment successbut
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.
Its 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.

39% of employers
agree that quality of hire is the
most valuable metric for gauging
recruitment success.

So we know quality of hire is important, but how do

recruiters go about improving it?

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

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

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Your Measurement

85%

of companies that measure

quality of hire agree
that 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, theyre
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 heres the thing:

there is no concrete formula for
calculating quality of hire.
Its often dependent on an organizations 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

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

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

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

How to Take (Quality) Control

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

LEVEL

1 Define What Youre 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 organizations
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:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Align with Hiring Managers

Identify Cultural Fit Criteria

Communicate Both with Candidates

Make it easy for hiring managers to share what

theyre looking for by giving them the ability to
write and edit job descriptions, view your current
applicant pool, and leave detailed comments
about candidatesall within the same system.

80% of managers named cultural fit as

a top priority to consider when hiring
a new employee. 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?

Attract best-fit candidates by making it clear

what youre 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.

Cubiks, International Study on Job and Culture Fit http://www.cubiks.co.uk/

7 iCIMS Hire Expectations Institute, The Impact of Successful Employee Referral Programs https://www.icims.com/sites/www.icims.com/files/public/The%20Impact%20of%20
Successful%20Employee%20Referral%20Programs%20FINAL.pdf

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

LEVEL

2 Optimize the Screening Process

The unfortunate reality is that 50-75% of applicants arent 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

Ask for a Video

Cover Letter

Turn to Leading
Assessment Providers

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.

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.

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 candidates 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

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

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 candidateseasily.
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

candidates 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.

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

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.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

LEVEL

4 Monitor and Adjust

Sourcing Strategies

Where do your organizations 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, theyre 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

We Recommend:

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.

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.

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

The Hired Candidate Source Report

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

LEVEL

5 Clearly Define New Hire Objectives

(and Supply Needed Resources)

Improving quality of hire doesnt 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 whats 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

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

10

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

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, theres 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 candidatesin other words, build that talented workforceis
increased.

12 PricewaterhouseCooper http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/people-organisation/publications/ceosurvey-talent-challenge.html

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

11

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

How iCIMS Can Help

iCIMS is a leading provider of innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition solutions
that help businesses win the war for top talent. Scalable, easy to use, and backed by award-winning
customer service, iCIMS enables organizations to manage their entire talent acquisition lifecycle from
building talent pools, to recruiting, to onboarding, all within a single cloud-based platform that is
connected to the largest partner ecosystem of HR technologies in the industry. Supporting more than
3,200 contracted customers, iCIMS is one of the largest and fastest-growing talent acquisition solution
providers.

Connect with iCIMS on social media!

The Recruiters Blueprint For Better Quality of Hire

12

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.

2016 iCIMS, Inc. All rights reserved.