How to Measure Quality of Hire: A 30-60-90 Day Review Checklist

“Was that marketer a good hire?” The CEO expected more revenue. The marketing lead can finally hand off ad operations. HR knows the role is filled and the person is still employed, but has little evidence to settle the question.

Measuring hiring success starts with three decisions: what counts as success, who goes into the denominator, and how long you’ll observe them. Filling a role, securing an offer acceptance, retaining an employee, and seeing the expected job performance are different outcomes. Track them separately before combining them into a rate. For performance, set checkpoints such as 30, 60, and 90 days to see whether the behaviors you looked for during hiring show up on the job.

Experts featured in a 2015 SHRM article on measuring quality of hire make a similar point. No single quality-of-hire metric works for every organization; what you measure depends on your priorities. The article also cautions that turnover, performance ratings, and hiring manager satisfaction are useful proxies, but none is itself a measure of hiring quality.

Growing companies often hire too few people to assess an evaluation tool’s effectiveness from a handful of outcomes. A review worksheet can help you compare hiring expectations and evidence with the work assigned, behaviors observed, and support provided after the person joins. The 30-, 60-, and 90-day checkpoints are starting points. Adjust them to the role’s work cycle and the employee’s opportunities to perform.

Consider a skincare brand with about 50 employees that sells through its own online store. It hires an experienced performance marketer after a work sample task and interviews. The team looked for someone who distinguishes verified numbers from estimates, considers how budgets and discounts affect new customers and profit, and checks inventory and discount terms with the people responsible before launch. The checklist follows those same behaviors through real campaigns and promotions during the first three months.

Separate Hiring Metrics From Quality of Hire

Read these outcomes together based on what you want to improve, rather than forcing them into one score. Low offer acceptance calls for a closer look at offer terms and communication. A gap between expected and actual performance calls for comparing your selection criteria with the work and support the employee received. No metric explains the cause on its own. Knowing which outcome deteriorated tells you where to investigate next.

Tenure alone is also a poor basis for judging quality of hire. In the same SHRM article, Lars Schmidt, founder of employer branding and recruiting consultancy Amplify Talent, explains that retention is harder to measure because so many contributing factors fall outside an individual’s capabilities. A strong hire may leave after receiving another company’s offer.

Before recording outcomes, agree on the following definitions.

Check Whether Hiring Expectations Hold Up on the Job

Assessment continues after the employee joins. The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an independent agency that oversees the US federal civil service merit system, describes probation as the final assessment before permanent appointment in its 2005 report, The Probationary Period: A Critical Assessment Opportunity. Even several strong selection methods used together improve the odds of choosing the right person without guaranteeing it. The report therefore argues that finding a poor fit during probation should be viewed as a manager continuing the assessment through actual work, rather than simply as a selection mistake.

For the marketer, the company expected someone who could review customer acquisition campaign results and recommend the next campaign plan. The hiring evidence came from a work sample response that compared channels by ad spend per first-time customer and proposed checking inventory and terms with the operations lead before offering additional discounts. The team had not verified whether the candidate could calculate profit after discount costs or understood the limits of their budget approval authority. It recorded those open questions in the hiring decision notes, with a plan to observe whether the new hire addressed them while planning their first promotion. After the person joins, the review goes beyond “Are they settling in well?” to whether those same behaviors appear in real campaigns and promotions.

A new hire may have no opportunity to run a major seasonal promotion within their first 90 days. Instead of waiting for seasonal revenue results, define the behaviors and evidence you can assess at each stage. You can already observe whether the marketer checks inventory and terms with the operations lead before a smaller discount event. If they have not yet had a chance to lead a major seasonal promotion, record “No opportunity to observe” for that item instead of assigning a low rating.

With Small Samples, Show the Denominator and the Gaps

Consider a hypothetical group of eight new hires. Six have reached the review checkpoint. Of those, five have enough evidence for an assessment: four met expectations, and one did not. Evidence is insufficient for the sixth employee. The remaining two have not yet reached the checkpoint. Among the five with verified outcomes, 80% met expectations (4/5). Among the six eligible for review, evidence is available for 5/6.

That 80% does not predict the same result in your next hiring round. Record the expectations applied, who made each judgment using what evidence, and why some employees remain unassessed. In the SHRM article, Shanil Kaderali, vice president at recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) firm Pierpoint International, notes that an initial measurement has limited meaning without a point of comparison. Treat your first review as a baseline. With a small group, read the individual cases and look for areas that repeatedly go unverified.

Review the Work, Manager, and Onboarding Alongside Results

A candidate who wrote a strong work sample response may struggle to execute a real campaign for several reasons. The assignment may have omitted a significant constraint, or no one may have explained who approves what after the employee joined. If you assigned work outside the role originally agreed upon, reset expectations to match the new responsibilities first.

The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) describes job analysis as the foundation for all assessment and selection decisions in its job analysis guidance. It also explains that the same analysis can inform training needs and performance appraisals. For a meaningful comparison, the tasks in your hiring scorecard and post-hire review should come from the same job analysis.

Turn Review Findings Into Better Criteria and Questions

Record specific changes to criteria, questions, and work sample tasks, rather than impressions such as “Don’t hire someone like this again.” If the hiring process never established what the candidate personally contributed to a campaign run with their marketing lead, strengthen the experience-based interview questions. If the work sample materials omitted an inventory constraint that matters in real promotions, revise the materials. When a problem stems from unclear budget approval limits, fix that guidance in onboarding separately from any decision to raise the hiring bar.

You can also revisit hiring evidence saved in Interview Pro and Assessment. Review the interview responses and work sample answers that shaped your expectations, then have the person responsible compare those records directly with observations from the job.

Before your next hire, update the hiring scorecard to reflect gaps between expectations and observations. Use the hiring process plan to decide which stage will gather each piece of evidence. At the final decision, document expectations and open questions in the hiring decision record so the employee is not judged against a different standard after joining.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does High 90-Day Retention Mean We’re Hiring Well?

Retention and expected performance tell you different things. Review the role assigned, the support provided, and the behaviors and results observed. Use retention as one indicator of whether employees are staying.

Can We Measure Quality of Hire With Only a Few New Hires?

Yes. Document individual cases, specifying the denominator, observation period, and anything not yet verified. Use the results to identify specific questions to address in your next hiring cycle and onboarding process. A small group’s results do not establish general predictive validity or prove a tool’s effectiveness.

Related Reading

• How to Reduce Bad Hires: A Hiring Improvement Guide for Growing Companies
• When the CEO and the Team Lead Are Looking for Different People
• Work Sample Task Example: From Brief to Answers, Rubric, and Evaluation Notes
• Designing a Hiring Process for Growing Companies: What Each Stage Should Do

Sources

• SHRM · The Holy Grail of Recruiting: How to Measure Quality of Hire (2015) — No universal metric; turnover, performance ratings, and manager satisfaction as proxies; challenges in measuring retention; limitations of an initial measurement.
• MSPB · The Probationary Period: A Critical Assessment Opportunity (2005) — Probation as the final assessment before permanent appointment; limitations of selection methods (pp. 5–6).
• OPM · Job Analysis — Job analysis as the foundation for assessment and selection, with applications in training and performance appraisal.