How do you know if you've actually made a great hire?
It's one of the biggest questions facing Talent Acquisition teams.
Yet while organisations closely track metrics such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire and vacancies filled, many struggle to measure what happens after the hire.
Did the person perform well?
Did they make an impact?
Did they add value to the team?
And ultimately, would you hire them again?
This is where Quality of Hire (QoH) comes in.
At our latest Talent Boardroom, we brought together TA and HR leaders to explore this challenge and consider what a practical approach to measuring Quality of Hire could look like.
What is Quality of Hire?
Quality of Hire is essentially about understanding the value and impact a new employee brings to an organisation.
It moves the conversation beyond:
“Did we fill the role?”
and towards:
“Did we make the right hiring decision?”
A recruitment process can be efficient, cost-effective and successful in filling a vacancy, while still resulting in someone who isn't the right fit.
Quality of Hire looks at the outcome of that decision.
Why is it so difficult to measure?
The challenge is that there is no universal definition of a "quality hire".
What success looks like will vary depending on the organisation, role and team.
For some positions, performance may be relatively straightforward to measure against defined objectives or KPIs.
For others, value might be demonstrated through collaboration, innovation, leadership or contribution to the wider organisation.
There is also the question of who gets to decide what "quality" looks like.
Hiring manager feedback can be valuable, but it can also introduce subjectivity and inconsistency.
This makes Quality of Hire less about finding one perfect metric and more about creating a shared understanding of what successful hiring looks like.
Start with something you can actually use
Quality of Hire can quickly become complicated.
Organisations can spend significant time developing frameworks, collecting data and building dashboards, only to find that hiring managers aren't consistently using them.
A more practical approach is to start with a small number of meaningful measures.
Establish a baseline.
See what the data tells you.
Then refine the approach as you learn more.
The goal isn't to create another complicated HR process.
It's to create something useful.
The questions worth asking
There may not be one universal Quality of Hire formula.
But that doesn't mean organisations shouldn't try to measure it.
A useful starting point is simply to ask:
What does a great hire actually look like for us?
How would we know if we'd made the right decision?
And are we measuring the things that genuinely tell us that?
These questions can help organisations move away from simply measuring recruitment activity and towards understanding the outcomes of hiring.
Because ultimately, the success of recruitment isn't just about getting someone through the door.
It's about what happens once they are there.
Boardroom Conversations
Quality of Hire was the focus of our latest Talent Boardroom, “Defining Quality of Hire: Creating the Perfect Formula,” bringing together TA and HR leaders for an open discussion around one of the most important and challenging questions in recruitment.
We explored different perspectives, challenged assumptions and considered what a practical approach could look like.
And perhaps the biggest takeaway was simple:
You don't need the perfect formula to start measuring Quality of Hire.
You need a useful one.
One that helps you understand whether your hiring decisions are creating the impact your organisation needs.
The Talent Boardroom is an invite-only community bringing together Talent Acquisition and HR leaders to share ideas, challenge thinking and explore the issues shaping the future of talent. Our latest session took place on 18 June 2026, bringing leaders together for practical discussion and collaboration around Quality of Hire.
Want to take a seat at the table? Message us on LinkedIn
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