Over the past few months I’ve attended a number of recruitment conferences that have demonstrated some impressive case studies with regards to direct recruitment.

The in-house recruitment teams involved have taken a multifaceted approach; building their presence within social media, creating talent pools & communities, expanding their reach internationally and incorporating mobile technology amongst other things.

Several companies had metrics to illustrate the fruits of their labour such as reduced cost per hire, improved time to hire, % of candidates hired via social media, improvements to the candidate experience and enhanced employment brand perception.

However, the one metric missing for a lot of people and perhaps ultimately the most difficult one to measure is the actual quality of hire. This topic often comes up during the various in-house vs agency debates I’ve heard.

At the most recent conference I attended, Smart Resourcing 2010, one of the speakers did admit that quality of hire was administratively too difficult for them to measure. When you consider all the potential factors involved in quality of hire, it’s no surprise companies struggle with this. Having said that, quality of hire is so vital to the future performance of a company, I’m surprised more firms do not have some form of metrics in place.

So here are my questions for you:

1) How do you currently measure your quality of hire (if you do)?

2) What factors do you think should be involved in measuring quality of hire, and over what time scale?

3) How do you think technology could be used to facilitate measuring quality of hire?