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We're dedicated to helping people improve their quality of hire. Whether or not you’re already using SkillSurvey solutions, if you're interested in ways to increase quality of hire, we welcome you to access our selected resources.

White Paper: Best Practices in Reference Checking

A best practice in reference checking involves 360-degree (multi-source) feedback on how well candidates performed in their previous jobs. It is based upon the premise that the prediction of future work behavior can be increased by feedback from those individuals -- managers, peers, colleagues, direct reports, and clients -- who have worked with the candidate in the past. This paper discusses 360-degree feedback, as well as other best practices in reference checking, and provides statistical evidence to address how the SkillSurvey Pre-Hire 360™ measures up.

Podcast: The Next Generation of Talent Management Initiates – by Dr. Peter Cappelli

Dr. Peter Cappelli, Wharton Professor and Author, provides a high-level summary of his book, Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty. The April 3 presentation was sponsored by SkillSurvey, the pioneer and leading provider of web-based reference checking and passive sourcing technologies, and DoubleStar, a leading provider of talent acquisition and talent measurement solutions.

White Paper: Leveraging 360-Degree Assessments... Pre-Hire

360-degree assessments (360s) are well-established valuable tools for measuring the performance and impact of existing employees. Common applications for 360s include annual salary reviews, career development planning, and promotion or transfer decisions. The information provided by a 360 represents the combined input of multiple stakeholder roles including, but not limited to, managers, peers, direct reports, business partners, clients, and others. Establishing a common set of criteria (skills, behaviors, etc.) for assessing employees enables employers to evaluate an individual's contribution according to an agreed-to series of benchmarks, and compare it to other employees in similar roles or job levels. The result is an even playing field for decision-making.

This paper describes why a 360 process is replacing phone-based reference checks for external job candidates.

White Paper: The Web-Based Reference Checking Solution That Solves Companies' Greatest Hiring Dilemma

Reference checking is critical to ensuring that companies make sound hiring decisions. When companies base hiring decisions on high quality data regarding candidates, they increase staff retention and productivity and reduce legal risks. But the traditional method of reference-checking by phone is time-consuming, inefficient and ineffective.

References are hard-to-reach and usually unable (or unwilling) to provide any critical information about the candidate, or offer a detailed assessment of their abilities. SkillSurvey provides a web-based solution that lets business quickly and confidentially verify references and capture consistent, honest, and in-depth information about a candidate’s qualifications and background. SkillSurvey technology raises employee selection to a whole new level of productivity, sophistication, ease and accuracy.

White Paper: The Writing on the Wall: Why Quality (Not Speed) of Hire Matters

Hiring the right people for the right job in a timely fashion has always been a challenge for human resource professionals. Many times organizations need to find someone to fill a position quickly, but quality of hire may be compromised if speed is the main goal. Charles Handler, president and founder of Rocket-Hire, explains the importance of finding the right balance of speed and accuracy in hiring. "Anyone out there that has to do hiring understands that there's always a need to get somebody.... But you need to focus on doing things right. One of the keys to it, at a really high level, is just understanding how to evaluate what you're doing."

White Paper: Quality of Hire: Assessment, Performance Management, or both?

Being able to assess and predict the performance of current and potential employees is a critical part of talent management. Recent studies of various industries and types of workers show that the value of the output from the top third of employees is almost twice that of average workers. In addition, the difference between the annual value of the top third and the average performer is at least 40% of their salary. These statistics vary for different types of employees, and the output value of some types of employees, knowledge workers in particular, is difficult to measure. However, despite that, it is becoming obvious that to increase performance organizations must: Define Quality for a Specific Job Assess Quality of a Specific Employee Predict Quality in a Potential Hire.

According to Kevin Wheeler, President of Global Learning Resources, Inc., there are three key ingredients to a quality hire:
1. Someone who achieves or exceeds the performance of an "average" performer.
2. Someone who stays beyond an average time.
3. Someone who harmonizes with the hiring manager and work team.

White Paper: Measuring Quality of Hire: You Can't Improve What You Can't Measure

Hiring the best people is broadly accepted as one of the most important components of a successful business, with strong performers greatly out-performing weak performers, reducing turnover and enhancing profitability. Given that a skilled workforce and institutional knowledge have become intangible assets representing around 70% of value of companies in the S&P 500, finding, hiring and retaining qualified employees is more important than ever. This white paper looks at how Dell, Inc., has utilized metric analysis and integrated internal systems to measure talent acquisition and retention performance and to drive quality in the talent acquisition (TA) process. A six-step process is offered for establishing strong recruitment sales and marketing strategies to maintain quality in the staffing process through improved measure of quality of hires.