Using a Quality of Hire Scorecard

Tracking the quality of your workforce is no easy feat. One of the most important – but also possibly the most subjective – metrics on the market, the quality of hire indicator can tell you a lot about the current and future health of your organization. But you have to get it right in order to reap the benefits.

Taking the subjective approach to quality of hire rarely yields an actionable result. This means that just 48% of organizations report they are actually tracking their quality of hire, despite 88% saying they believed it was an important metric to engage.

The problem then is not the metric itself, but the tools and strategies we use to track it. One such tool – the quality of hire scorecard – aims to give organizations a simple and actionable framework for better quality of hire tracking.

The importance of measuring quality of hire

Tracking the quality of hire metric is a long-term process that allows you to design and implement a more effective talent acquisition strategy. This is why it’s so important to step away from subjectivity and standardize how you measure quality of hire. When you are able to compare scores between individual employees, you are able to establish patterns based on behavior, experience, and even the source of individual recruits. This empowers your team to tune its hiring and recruitment tactics to more efficiently locate quality talent who will contribute to the overall success of your business.

Implementing a standardizing tool like a quality of hire scorecard allows you to quickly and easily compare consistent quality of hire results from person to person. This gives you better insight into the quality of hire overall within your company, and effectively informs future hiring endeavors.

Learn more about the importance of quality of hire here: How to improve your quality of hire.

Data to include in your quality of hire scorecard

The unique values within your organization may inform what data you choose to measure with your quality of hire scorecard. But there are several datapoints that you should ensure are being tracked, regardless of your company’s relationship to these factors. 

Here are a few key indicators that help you to easily and effectively measure QoH.

• Hiring manager satisfaction. Is the individual who brought this employee onboard satisfied by their progress and performance? Do they feel they made the right choice? Are the expectations set during the interview process being met to the manager’s satisfaction?
  
  

• Ramp-up time. How long did it take the employee from their first day to become self-sufficient within the workplace? What was their anticipated ramp-up time? What, if any, extra support did they need to become proficient within their role?
  
  

• Employee satisfaction. How does the employee feel about their progress and performance? Are they meeting their goals? Did they feel they were adequately prepared for the expectations of their role during the hiring process?
  
  

• Productivity. Is the employee meeting, exceeding, or failing to meet performance expectations within their role?
  
  

• Peer feedback. How do the employee’s peers feel about them? Are they comfortable to work with? Are they playing as part of the team? Do peers feel supported by the employee?
  
  

• Cultural fit. How does the employee fit or add to the cultural values within the organization? Is their presence within the company supportive, or disruptive?

Each of the above indicators represents a critical component to the overall quality of hire score. These help to effectively measure your employee’s overall value to the company, as well as indicate any opportunities for growth or intervention.

How to use a quality of hire scorecard

The QoH scorecard can be an effective tool in your greater quality of hire strategy. Let’s talk about how you can make it work for your company.

How to implement a quality of hire scorecard

Implementing a QoH scorecard is as easy as finding or designing the right scorecard for your organization, and getting HR, management, and other leadership on board with its use. QoH scorecards may become standard at 90-day assessments, quarterly reviews, and other employee performance checks within a reasonable time frame.

It is important to ensure that all who might use a quality of hire scorecard be given similar training on how they work, and what to do with them once they have been filled out. Here’s how it works:

Each factor on a score card is rated out of 10 for the employee. For example, the manager filling out the scorecard will rate their satisfaction with the employee’s performance out of 10. For factors incorporating multiple perspectives, such as peer feedback, you might take an average score from the individuals you asked to participate.

Once the scorecard has been filled out, you will add the scores together and divide them by the number of factors included. Finally, you will multiply that number by 10 to get a percentage value.

How to leverage quality of hire scorecard learnings

The quality of hire scorecard is designed to make it easier for your talent acquisition team to gain actionable insights into individual employees’ performance and company value. 

High scores can help you to identify success stories, high-performing employees, and those with leadership potential. High scores with similarities will indicate avenues that might be utilized to bolster talent acquisition in the future. Low scorecard results, or low scores for specific indicators, demonstrate an area for potential growth. 

As a standard, quality of hire scorecards can also help you to establish quality of hire for your workforce more broadly. Average scores will give you insight into the relative health of your workforce and any changes which may need to be made. Especially if there are problems being indicated for a large number of individuals, this might demonstrate a training tactic, hiring policy, etc. may need to be analyzed and changed.

Taken over time, these scores can also help you to track your progress as a company. A company-wide average score in 2025 which beats your score in 2024 shows that your efforts are working.

Best practices and tips for using a quality of hire scorecard

Here are a few tips to follow that will make use of your quality of hire scorecard more effective over time.

• Use it regularly. It is recommended that you utilize the QoH scorecard at 90 days, and then at least once again within the first year of an individual’s employment. From there, the QoH should be used at least once a year to give you an ongoing indication of both the individual and average QoH score.
  
  

• Add and subtract. The components of your QoH scorecard should not be fixed. You can add and subtract factors as time goes on, as your values change, and as other important factors to employee performance and quality are revealed.
  
  

• Understand its limits. A QoH scorecard should not be a stand-in for deeper investigation should a problem arise, but it may indicate whether there is a problem which needs to be addressed. Consider your QoH scorecard as a diagnostic tool. If there is a problem, your team should seek to understand why before any action is taken.

Getting started with quality of hire

The quality of hire scorecard is just one tool that can make tracking this all-important metric a little easier. Taking a data-driven approach to your QoH can help to tame this elusive statistic and make it a key part of your overall business strategy.

CrossChq is one solution that can help make that happen. Learn more about how CrossChq can support your quality of hire metric here.