Beyond the Resume: Assessing Quality of Hire in an Interview

Why is everyone so focused on quality of hire? Because exceptional hires are the heartbeat of a thriving company. The quality of your hire increases productivity, improves retention, maximizes revenue, enhances morale and reduces costs.

Resumes and phone screens were once the gold standard of hiring, however, they do not paint a full picture of the candidate’s suitability for a role. They fall short in capturing a candidate’s skills, potential and personality.

Companies are now turning toward alternative methods for assessing candidates. Video interviews allow candidates to showcase their communication skills and personality. Skills assessments and work samples give employers tangible evidence of performance. These tools combined give you a stronger assessment of the quality of your hire from the start.

Go beyond the resume with digital interviewing tools. Check out our best practices below for help in finding candidates who truly excel.

Understanding Quality of Hire

What is the quality of hire? Quality of hire measures the value a new hire brings to the company. Quality of hire is usually measured with a score or percentage. Your employees’ scores can be tracked over time to measure improvement and to identify high and low performing employees.

You need to examine further than simply the cost of hire and time to fill. Quality of hire should track job performance, cultural fit, skills, values and aspirations to get the full picture and ensure long-term employee satisfaction and retention.

Limitations of Resumes

Anyone can list skills on a resume. In general, resumes have their own list of weaknesses:

• Resumes can create bias.
• Resumes do not always accurately reflect a worker’s skills or accomplishments.
• Resumes remove personality.

Resumes alone do not give employers the full picture of their candidates. Relying solely on a resume or phone screen manufactures an evaluation that overlooks some of your most quality potential candidates.

The Role of Video Interviewing

Simply relying on dated recruitment efforts will not help you source the best quality hire in todays workforce. This is where video interviewing steps in. Video interviews hold benefits that resumes and phone screens can’t provide.

• Flexibility for both candidates and interviewers. Gone are the days of back and forth phone calls and emails to schedule interview times. And candidates no longer have to find time during their current work day to fit in an interview. Video interviews allow candidates to record screening video interviews from anywhere, at any time. In turn, they then give the interviewer the ability to watch and assess anytime, anywhere as well (and share with the entire hiring team).
• Ability to assess non-verbal cues and communication skills. A resume and phone interview alone give a limited view the candidate. The ability to see and hear a candidate’s energy levels, body language and tone are crucial to assessing their soft skills, personality and overall fit.
• Consistency in the interview process. Video screening interviews ensure a fair and consistent interview process. Each candidate can be asked the same preselected questions and rated by a standard rubric, instead of different interviewers using inconsistent methods.

Video interviews also simplify your holistic interview approach. You can incorporate live video interviews too:

1. Incorporate behavior and situational interview techniques
2. Assess soft skills and cultural fit through conversation
3. Use structured interviews to reduce bias and increase reliability

As you begin to incorporate video interviewing into your recruitment process, it is essential that you choose software that is created specifically for interviewing. Many recruiters believe that free, live video calls will suffice but they won’t provide the added features that create a well-rounded interview process and take your recruitment to the next level. interviewstream software plays a role in the entire process. From AI Recruiting Assistant to help with job descriptions, email communications, social media posts and interview questions to interview insights for data-driven recruiting, employee onboarding tools, and the ability to integrate with any ATS—dedicated software brings the process full circle.

Pro-Tip: Check out our blog with our top tips for conducting video interviews.

Best Practices for Assessing Quality of Hire

39% of talent leaders agree that quality of hire is the most valuable metric to evaluate. Despite its obvious significance, quality of hire is one of the most difficult metrics for teams to measure. Here are a few tips for the measurement process:

• Combine multiple assessment methods for a comprehensive evaluation. Include pre-hiring aptitude tests, quality assessments, cultural fit, job performance and retention to get the entire perspective.
• Gather continuous feedback and improvement of the hiring process. Collect feedback from your candidates by implementing post-interview surveys, structured follow-up emails and one-on-one debrief sessions. You can use interviewstream tools like on demand interviews and AI recruiting assistant to simplify and structure this process.

Knowing your quality of hire metric means you can pinpoint your weak spots and adjust accordingly.

Ditch the Paper and Incorporate interviewstream

It’s time to ditch the old and incorporate the new. Traditional resumes and phone screens had their time and place but they will no longer help you obtain top candidates. It is essential to recognize that you need the right tools in place to get a comprehensive evaluation of your candidates to find the best quality hires.

interviewstream has the tools you need to move forward and assess your quality of hire so you can obtain and retain the top performers for your company. Talk to an expert today to start looking beyond the resume!

About The Author

Monique Mahler is the CEO of interviewstream. She is an avid researcher of facts, a self proclaimed marketing geek, and an equestrian in her spare time.