What is the Quality of Hire Audit?
The Quality of Hire Audit connects the evidence available before each hiring
decision with subsequent new hire performance, ramp and retention across 15+
hires. It identifies the patterns shared by strong outcomes, the missed
indicators of weak performance at interview stage, and how to improve selection
controls before your next hiring sprint.
What question does the Talent Ascent Quality of Hire Audit answer?
Which pre-hire evidence appears most consistently among people who reached the
required performance level, and which decision patterns recur among weak hires?
How often do your interviewers make the best hiring decisions - and what were the gaps which led to the bad hires?
What do you receive with the Talent Ascent Quality of Hire Audit?
- A defined strong, acceptable and weak outcome standard
- Comparison of documented outcomes with manager assessment
- Performance, ramp, retention and exit patterns across the cohort
- The pre-hire evidence most consistently present among strong outcomes
- Missed warning signs, decision overrides and evidence gaps associated with weak outcomes
- Cost of weak outcomes across direct cost, paid-but-unrealised capacity, attributable opportunity cost and re-hire cost
- Concentrations by role family, decision process or other relevant cohort factor
- The proportion of the next hiring cohort exposed to the same selection controls
- Prioritised selection-control changes
- A 60-minute findings meeting
- One optional 30-minute findings Q&A
- A 25% fee credit toward Interview Process Design when booked within 30 days
Who is the Talent Ascent Quality of Hire Audit suitable for?
- You are concerned with the number of involuntary exits and new hire performance within the first year of employment
- You have high attrition and resignations due to poor company fit
- You are not satisfied with the number of new hires who become top performers
- Candidates score high in interviews but underperform once on the job
- The company is preparing another material hiring sprint
- Leaders want to understand which hiring evidence was present at interviews in high performers
- The company needs diagnosis before redesigning interview processes
Who should not buy the Quality of Hire Audit?
- You have made fewer than 10 historic hires for a particular team with 6+ months tenure at your company
- Historical decision records do not exist - e.g. hiring decisions were made informally and interview feedback was not recorded
- You don’t anticipate hiring for the relevant team/function in the next 12 months, so there is no hiring sprint for the findings to be applied to in future
What information does Talent Ascent require to deliver your Quality of Hire Audit?
The data we require may vary depending on your specific requirements and systems
you use. Guideline data and access we may require includes:
- A defined set of 10+ historic hires for a particular role/function with 6+ months tenure with your business
- ATS access, including interview feedback, process, and decision records
- Relevant HRIS and performance records
- Compensation and finance inputs for weak-outcome cost analysis
- Your anticipated hiring plan for the next 12 months
- One executive sponsor and access to the relevant functional leaders
How does the Talent Ascent Quality of Hire Audit process work?
- Schedule an intro call with Talent Ascent to discuss your requirements and goals.
- Talent Ascent will submit a proposal to you following requirements gathering.
- Agree target functions, geographies and systems included in the quote.
- Engagement terms agreement.
- Project commences, with weekly meeting touch-points and async comms throughout to ensure continuous alignment.
- Findings are converted into a prioritised improvement plan of recommendations.
- Findings are delivered in a 60-minute meeting with up to 4 stakeholders.
How much does the Talent Ascent Quality of Hire Audit cost?
Investment from £10,000. The quote reflects cohort size, record condition and the
number of poor-outcome cost cases. Standard delivery is estimated at three weeks
from assignment commencement.
How does the cost of our Quality of Hire Audit compare to a standard agency fee spend?
Two numbers matter here. The first is the cohort the audit examines. The second
is more direct: what it costs to replace one person the process got wrong.
| Base salary of the role | Replacement agency fee at 15% | at 20% | Our audit starting fee | Our fee as % of one replacement fee | Audit fee as a multiple of one replacement fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £50,000 | £7,500 | £10,000 | £10,000 | 1.00–1.33× | |
| £60,000 | £9,000 | £12,000 | £10,000 | 0.83–1.11× | |
| £70,000 | £10,500 | £14,000 | £10,000 | 0.71–0.95× | |
| £80,000 | £12,000 | £16,000 | £10,000 | 0.63–0.83× | |
| £90,000 | £13,500 | £18,000 | £10,000 | 0.56–0.74× | |
| £100,000 | £15,000 | £20,000 | £10,000 | 0.50–0.67× | |
| £120,000 | £18,000 | £24,000 | £10,000 | 0.42–0.56× | |
| £150,000 | £22,500 | £30,000 | £10,000 | 0.33–0.44× | |
| £200,000 | £30,000 | £40,000 | £10,000 | 0.25–0.33× |
At a base salary equivalent to a mid-level role and above, the audit costs less than a single replacement fee - and it examines the whole cohort’s historic hiring decision pattern, rather than one outcome.
Talent Ascent cost per hire examined
| Roles in scope | Our fee | Effective cost per audited role |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | £10,000 | £667 |
How does the Quality of Hire Audit compare with other Talent Ascent services?
Choose the Quality of Hire Audit when the concern is the relationship between
past hiring decisions and subsequent employee outcomes.
Choose the Hiring Effectiveness Audit when the concern is hiring system cost, speed, funnel performance or operating consistency.
Choose Interview Process Design when the company is ready to build the new selection system.
What are the alternatives to the Talent Ascent Quality of Hire Audit service?
| Route | What you get | Typical cost | When it’s the better choice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manager retrospectives | Qualitative views on which hires worked out | Internal time | The cohort is small, you expect limited team growth, and you don’t hire often enough to need scalable findings |
| DIY correlation in your HRIS | Performance and retention data cut by cohort | Internal analyst time | You have an analyst, clean records and time, and interviews are already structured and standardised |
| ATS quality-of-hire modules | Automated surveys and dashboards | Licence cost varies by vendor | You want to start tracking from today rather than learn from past decisions |
| Quality of Hire Audit | An evidence-based read of which interview signals actually predicted performance across 15+ past hires, and the selection controls to change | from £10,000 | You are about to hire again and want the last cohort’s lessons applied first |
FAQ
How does Talent Ascent define a high-performing hire?
In the Quality of Hire Audit, we derive the definition of a high performing hire based on the top performers in the cohort sample you provide as benchmark. Some of the data we consider includes: job scope and performance targets, data on performance assessment records, line manager qualitative feedback on mis-hires and top performers, realised productivity ramp time, new hire performance records, promotion track records, employees who failed and passed probation, and employee turnover reasons.
Will the Talent Ascent Quality of Hire Audit prove why a hire succeeded or failed?
The Quality of Hire Audit focuses on evaluating the current predictive reliability of your interview process. The aim of the report is to identify addressable gaps in the interview process you used to hire your current team. We provide interview process improvement recommendations aimed at improving the predictive effectiveness of your candidate assessments. We look at signals which are present in historic mis-hire interviews, gaps that should be tested moving forward, and high-performance indicators which should be probed and satisfied at interview stage - based on the competencies and experience of your current top performers.
Is the Quality of Hire Audit a performance assessment of individual employees?
The Quality of Hire Audit’s target unit of analysis is your historic hiring decision quality. Findings are reported as decisions and subsequent employee performance patterns, looking for correlations in interview focus and feedback, and subsequent performance outcomes once the person is employed.
What happens in the optional Q&A session after the findings delivery meeting?
The 30-minute session is offered in case you have additional questions about the delivered findings and recommendations. New data, new modelling and process design require a separate scope.