Submitted by PaulM on
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What is the MT and the group's recommendation for measuring Quality of Hire? What collection of metrics go into it's calculation? It's a highly debated topic with seemingly no right answers.
Lou Adler's done some great work on this, and there's an interesting read by Todd Rose called "The End of Average" which talks about how every aspect of human performance is designed for the individual, except in HR. I haven't cross referenced it with your reading list, but I found it worth a read on the subject of human performance psychology.
Any SHRM and Finance Folks Out There?
Hi Paul,
One way to evaluate this to try to put numbers on it. Apologies if this was included in the book; I haven't read it.
Depending on the role and how frequently your organization fills it, you can approximate the Cost Per Hire of any one person. That CPH represents the up-front organizational investment. You then have the ongoing cost of salary, benefits, overhead, etc.
The next step is to quantify the tangible and intangible results produced by this person. There is presumably a required or expected rate of return, which, given enough time, gets the organization to "breakeven" and then "profitable" on the investment in a given individual. Individuals who achieve "profitability" faster than the average could be deemed to be "quality hires."
More frequently, I think organizations use things like performance objectives, cost reductions, and process improvements as proxies.
Gut check: That's a bit cynical and reductive. We are after all, talking about human beings in all of our glorious complexity.
Some organizations and individual managers are impatient and rush to write off a "bad hire" too soon. That could be part of the reason that MT guidance on ethically managing someone out is in the 6-9 month range and only after repeated communication, feedback, and coaching on specific behaviors. If there's still negative ROI and failure to convert potential into actual at that point, then it probably is time to move on.