Quality of Hire Surveys
Once a candidate is hired, you can send out surveys to assess employee success and performance. You can create and send a series of surveys to the newly hired employee's direct manager, with each step of the series timed by the employee's start date (set as part of the employee's offer).
Getting started with Quality of Hire in Ashby? For a deeper walkthrough of the full workflow — from understanding what signal to collect, to configuring surveys, sequences, and automation, to managing enrollments and using reporting to improve hiring — take the Quality of Hire course in Ashby Academy. If you’re planning your rollout, the Rolling out Quality of Hire playbook is a practical companion for stakeholder planning, building the form and sequence, and communicating the program internally.
Looking for information on reporting on your Quality of Hire results? Check out Quality of Hire ReportsQuality of Hire Reports.
Permissions & access
Quality of Hire Surveys are available on the Legacy Plus, Plus, and Enterprise plans:
Foundations | Legacy Plus | Plus | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
The below permissions levels are required for various actions related to the creation, usage, and viewing of QoH surveys:
Action | Minimum permissions required |
|---|---|
Create forms and sequences | Organization Admin |
Enroll, bulk enroll, reassign, or stop a survey | Elevated access + a job/team/location access role covering the relevant candidate |
View QoH data beyond your own assigned surveys | Quality of Hire access role (granted separately) |
Grant the Quality of Hire access role to others | Organization Admin |
What is Quality of Hire?
Quality of hire refers to assessing whether your interview and hiring process identifies candidates who will succeed as employees.
Quality of hire differs from standard performance review processes in a few key ways:
- Quality of hire is designed to begin assessment of employee success as early as possible.
- Quality of hire is designed to give your talent team feedback on their recruiting process, primarily to improve interview process and assessment: early identification of signals that correlate with employee performance below or above expectations.
- Quality of hire is designed to be low-overhead and quick to minimize management costs.
In Ashby, the Quality of Hire feature consists of setting up a survey sequence delivered to the newly hired employee's direct manager. The sequence consists of a customized set of steps timed from the employee's start date, and at each step a survey is delivered to the manager.
For example, a fairly common Quality of Hire process is a 30/60/90-day assessment, in which the hiring manager submits their new employee assessment 30, 60, and 90 days from the employee's start date.
In Ashby, the survey sequence steps are customizable in both number and duration between deliveries, along with the survey form delivered at each step of a Quality of Hire sequence.
Overview
The following video provides an overview of Quality of Hire Surveys. You can also read the instructions below.
Configuring Quality of Hire sequences and forms
Configuring your Quality of Hire surveys consists of two steps: creating your Quality of Hire forms for managers to complete, and setting up survey sequences to determine which form is sent to the hiring manager and when.
Creating a new survey form
To create your Quality of Hire form, navigate to Admin > Jobs & Applications > Employee Surveys.
Click + New Form to start building a new survey. Enter a title for your new survey form.
The Overall Assessment question asking the manager to rate the employee's performance from 1 to 5 is added to the form by default. Although this question can be deleted, we highly recommend keeping it on all forms as it is used as the rating in reporting. This question can only be added once per form.
- Create a copy of the survey.
- Archive the survey. The survey cannot be used moving forward but can be restored at any time.
- Re-order the sections of the survey.
- Delete a question on your survey.
- Add a new question to your survey or a section of your survey.
- Delete a section of your survey.
Adding a new question
You can add the following question types to your survey form:
- Short Answer: A single line of text (unformatted).
- Long Unformatted Answer: Allows for multiple lines of unformatted text.
- Phone: Only domestic or international phone numbers.
- Email: Only valid email addresses.
- Multiple Choice: Select a single option from the list.
- Checkboxes: Allows you to select multiple answers from the list.
- Date: Selected via a date picker.
- Yes/No: Only yes or no answers. If not required, no answer can be left.
- Number: Only whole numbers or decimals are permitted.
- Quality of Hire Rating: This question can only be added once per form and serves as the Quality of Hire rating for reporting.
- Linear Rating: Add a value between 1 and 10. There is also the option to add comments.
Creating a Quality of Hire survey sequence
Navigate to Admin > Jobs & Applications > Employee Surveys.
Click + New Sequence to start setting up your sequence.
Give your sequence a title, determine the cadence (standard defaults are provided, with the option to create your own), select your survey form, and confirm your sequence setup.
After you create your draft sequence via the setup wizard, you land at a configuration review. From this page, you can review your sequence details and edit anything as needed.
Steps
In the Steps tab, you can add, remove, and edit the steps of your survey.
- Archive the sequence. New hires can't be enrolled in the sequence when it's archived. The sequence can be restored at any time.
- Save your edits. Once saved, the sequence is available to use. If you save a draft sequence, its status updates from Draft to Configured. Your sequences are listed with their status and a clear indication of whether automation is enabled or disabled.
- Specify the unit used for measuring the employee's tenure. Can be set to days or months.
- Adjust the number of days or months for the next step of the sequence to be triggered.
- Adjust the survey form sent as part of the survey step.
- Delete a step in the survey sequence.
- Add a step to the survey sequence.
Instructions
Use the Instructions tab to add any instructions to show to the hiring manager when completing the survey form. You can also link out to any internal resources that will help your hiring manager complete their feedback.
Automation
In the Automation tab, you can set up automation for your survey sequence. When automation is enabled, Ashby attempts to automatically enroll hiring managers in sequences for newly hired candidates. Ashby does this by identifying the hiring manager associated with the hired candidate and extracting the start date from the offer letter. You can set the automation to auto-enroll all new hires, or set up custom automation rules. Only new hires that match the criteria set are automatically enrolled in the survey sequence.
- Use the Automation Settings drop-down menu to choose whether to automatically enroll all new hires, or only those who meet custom conditions.
- The + Add Field to Match option allows you to add additional conditions that the employee must meet to be auto-enrolled into a sequence (if using custom automation rules).
- Option to remove a rule from custom automation rules.
- Activate Draft Configuration confirms your custom automation rules so they are applied to new hires going forward.
- Discard Draft Configuration removes the conditions you have set up as part of your custom automation rules.
Enrolling new hires
The following video provides an overview of enrolling new hires. You can also follow the steps below.
If your team has opted not to use automated enrollment, you have the option to enroll any hired candidate from their candidate profile page.
There are three steps:
- Click + New Activity on the hired candidate profile.
- Select Quality of Hire.
- Review the survey to be sent, the recipient (or manager), and the start date provided, then click Enroll.
After completing these steps, the hiring manager is enrolled to receive surveys once the hired candidate joins as an employee.
Bulk enrollment
Reviewing recent hires
Recruiters can review their recent hires from Reports > Employee Surveys, where they can select the Recent Hires tab to review all hires and their enrollment status. This is a place to identify any missing or pending enrollments.
Bulk enrolling candidates
When reviewing recent hires, you can also take a bulk enrollment action. After selecting any candidates of interest using the checkboxes in the Select All column, click the Bulk Enrollment button. Select a Quality of Hire sequence. Ashby automatically enrolls the candidates, and any candidates with missing information are flagged for manual resolution.
Survey submission and notifications
When a hiring manager has a survey due, Ashby creates a task on their home page as a reminder.
Each user can also configure their personal notification settings for Quality of Hire surveys to receive an email notification or a Slack message if the Slack integration is set up. Users can submit their score and results directly within Slack.
The hiring manager receives the following notifications:
- A notification when the request is created.
- After three days, Ashby sends the first reminder.
- Ashby sends daily reminders until the next step starts.
When the survey sequence reaches its last step, reminders are sent for 30 days. If Ashby receives no response by then, the survey is marked as Skipped and the process ends. Reminders for any step prior to the final step stop when the next step is reached.
For example, if you have a Quality of Hire survey sent at 30, 60, and 120 days:
- Reminders for the 30-day survey continue until 60 days.
- Reminders for the 60-day survey continue until 120 days.
- Reminders for the 120-day survey continue for 30 days only, until 150 days.
Reassigning or stopping a survey
If the survey recipient needs to be changed or a survey needs to be stopped completely, navigate to Reports > Employee Surveys. Click the enrolled candidate in question.
From here, you can choose to Reassign or Stop Survey.
Providing access to Quality of Hire surveys and feedback
With Quality of Hire surveys, hiring managers can only see the employees they are responsible for assessing. If you'd like to allow other users to access Quality of Hire feedback, this section covers how to allow that wider access.
Limited Access users who are assigned to a Quality of Hire survey can access their assigned surveys, including past surveys with skipped steps, from the Employee Surveys card on their home page. The card appears for users who are the recipient of a past or present Quality of Hire survey. They do not need Elevated Access or the Quality of Hire access role to add feedback to an assigned survey.
To provide broader visibility into Quality of Hire enrollments and submitted survey results, an Organization Admin grants access on a team-by-team basis using a special Quality of Hire access role. The Quality of Hire role can be granted for the entire organization, or limited to a specific team or set of teams.
The Quality of Hire role is not automatically included in Organization Admin permissions and must be granted separately as an additional access role.
FAQ
Help! I'm seeing a Missing Information error or tag after enrolling a new hire
When automation is enabled, Ashby attempts to identify the hiring manager and the employee's anticipated start date. When this information is unavailable, the Quality of Hire sequence is generated in a "missing information" state, visible on the candidate's profile:
The recruiter can click the three dots on the Quality of Hire survey activity, then select View Survey Details to see where information is missing and add it.
When viewing the enrollments page at Reports > Employee Surveys, Ashby clearly identifies missing information:
The recruiter can click the hired candidate's name to open their enrollment details and provide the missing information:
What happens if a candidate is enrolled after they've already started?
If a new hire is enrolled after their start date, sequence steps that have already passed are marked as Skipped. For example, an employee enrolled in a 30/60/90-day sequence on day 45 of their employment has the 30-day step marked as Skipped. Similarly, if a sequence step receives no submission, it is marked as Skipped at the time of the next step.
The manager can review any skipped steps and backfill results as needed.
Who can see Quality of Hire results?
Hiring managers can only see the candidates they are responsible for assessing. If you'd like to provide additional access to view Quality of Hire results, see Quality of Hire SurveysProviding access to Quality of Hire surveys and forms.
How do I edit the survey details (who receives the survey and the candidate start date)?
If a candidate's start date changes, you can update their Quality of Hire Survey from the candidate's profile. Click the three horizontal dots to the right of the Quality of Hire Survey activity and select View Survey Details.
From there, select Edit Start Date to set the employee's new start date and reschedule the survey accordingly. The option to edit the start date is not available once the first step has been completed (submitted or skipped).
Select Reassign to change the survey recipient. Click Stop Survey to stop the survey from being sent altogether.
When will the survey show up as a task for a user to complete on their home page?
The survey is not released for completion until the day it is due. For example, if the Quality of Hire survey is set to send after 30 days, the user is prompted to complete it 30 days after the employee's start date.
What happens if an employee leaves the company or is terminated within the Quality of Hire survey period?
If an employee is terminated in Ashby within the Quality of Hire survey period, the Quality of Hire survey status changes to Employee Terminated. Previous survey submissions remain accessible.
For more on terminating users in Ashby, see How do I provision new users in my Ashby account manually?How do I provision new users in my Ashby account manually?.
Can I resend Quality of Hire surveys that were skipped?
A skipped Quality of Hire survey cannot be resent to the assigned Hiring Manager. However, Hiring Managers can add feedback to any skipped stages by navigating to Reports > Employee Surveys and clicking on the candidate in question. They can navigate to the skipped stage of the survey and click Add Feedback to complete the survey.
The assigned recipient can add feedback to the skipped stage as well:
- If the recipient has Limited Access, select the Employee Surveys card on the home page. Open the relevant candidate and survey, navigate to the skipped stage, and select Add Feedback.
The Employee Surveys card appears for users who are the recipient of a past or present Quality of Hire survey.
What is the difference between the Enrollment Status and Step Status for Quality of Hire surveys?
When you view a Quality of Hire survey enrollment, you see both the enrollment status for the overall sequence and the step status for each survey in that sequence.
The enrollment status can be one of the following:
- Draft
- Enrolled
- Finished
- Cancelled
- Hiring Manager Deactivated
- Employee Terminated
- Skipped
An enrollment has a Skipped status when every survey in the enrollment is skipped. An enrollment has a Finished status when at least one survey in the enrollment is submitted, even if other surveys are skipped.
For example, if a three-survey enrollment has two skipped surveys and one submitted survey, the enrollment status is Finished. If all three surveys are skipped, the enrollment status is Skipped.
For survey step statuses, they can be one of the following:
- Future Step
- Feedback Pending
- Submitted
- Skipped
The Skipped status can apply to an individual survey step or to the overall enrollment. For a survey step, it means the candidate was enrolled after the window for that step passed, or the step received no submission before the next step began. For an enrollment, it means every survey in the enrollment is skipped.
In the below example, the enrollment status is Enrolled and the three-survey step statuses are Skipped, Skipped, and Feedback Pending.
