JOIN now throws confetti when I send an offer. My colleagues have automated the celebration; I’m still waiting to see how the hire turns out.

I enjoy the confetti. I’ve just learned that the relief of closing a role arrives much earlier than the evidence that we hired well.

There is a very satisfying moment in recruitment when a candidate signs. The hiring manager is happy. The recruiter exhales. Someone posts a celebratory message in Slack. A vacancy that has been quietly ageing in the pipeline finally moves to “Hired.” For a few glorious minutes, everyone stops asking for an update.

That moment deserves celebrating. Finding the right person takes work, and an accepted offer is a meaningful milestone.

But the candidate can still change their mind. A counteroffer arrives. Personal circumstances change. Someone starts and discovers that the job they accepted and the job they are doing appear to be distant relatives. And even when everything goes according to plan, we still have to find out whether we made a good hiring decision.

For me, recruitment starts to feel like a win when the person is succeeding in their role and their work is making a useful difference. Until then, we have reasons to be optimistic. We also have a promise to deliver on.

A signed offer is a promise we still need to deliver on

Recruitment involves making a series of informed predictions.

We think this person can solve the problems we have. They think this role offers the work, environment and opportunities we described. Both sides have asked questions, gathered evidence and probably behaved a little more professionally than they will during a normal Tuesday.

Then the person starts, and those predictions meet reality.

Can they do the work we hired them for? Does their judgment hold up when the problems become less tidy than an interview exercise? Are they helping the people around them succeed?

And on our side: does the role match what we described? Do they have the context, support and authority they need? Are we actually willing to let them solve the problems we spent several interviews discussing?

Quality of hire becomes visible in that everyday reality. The strength of the interview only matters if it helps us make a decision that works beyond the interview.

The real win needs a definition

“Great hire” is an easy thing to say about someone everyone liked during the process. It becomes a more useful statement when we can explain what their work has made better.

That might mean more revenue. It might mean fewer customer escalations, more reliable software or a team that can finally deliver without its manager becoming the permanent emergency contact.

The useful question is: what should become better because we hired this person?

Ideally, we answer it before publishing the role.

“We need a senior engineer” gives us a title to recruit for. “We need someone who can improve the reliability of this part of the product and help the team make stronger technical decisions” gives us something to assess.

It also gives the new hire a clearer understanding of why they are there.

Before opening a role, the recruiter and hiring manager should be able to explain:

• What problem this hire will help solve.
• What progress could reasonably look like after 3 and 6 months.
• What support and authority the person will need.
• Which outcomes they can influence directly, and which depend on others.

Those answers should shape the interviews. If we need someone to develop a team, being the strongest individual contributor in the room will not tell us enough. If we need someone to make decisions in ambiguity, we need concrete examples of how they have done that.

Otherwise, we risk putting considerable effort into finding an impressive person without establishing whether we need what they are impressive at.

Recruitment cannot own the outcome alone

I care about what happens after someone joins because it tells me something about the quality of my work.

Did I gather the right evidence? Did I challenge an assumption when I needed to? Did I overlook a concern because the candidate was engaging, the process had been long and everyone really wanted this one to work? Those are uncomfortable questions. They are also more useful than congratulating ourselves on filling the role quickly.

But a hiring outcome reflects more than the assessment.

A capable person can struggle with contradictory priorities. An experienced colleague can spend months waiting for decisions. A recruiter cannot compensate for an onboarding plan consisting of a laptop and good wishes. Recruitment is responsible for helping define the need, assessing relevant evidence and representing the opportunity honestly. The hiring manager is responsible for setting direction, providing feedback and creating the conditions for someone to contribute. The new colleague brings their expertise, effort and judgment.

We need to look at all of that when we discuss quality of hire. Otherwise, it risks becoming a polished way of asking whether the new person survived our organisation.

The same care applies when someone leaves. A resignation deserves curiosity before it becomes a verdict. We may have missed a mismatch. The role may have changed. Their circumstances may have changed. Retention is part of the picture, but we still need to understand the contribution someone made and the reasons they stayed or left.

Keep the feedback loop open

Recruiters spend hours discussing candidates before they join. It seems strange how little time we can spend learning from what happens afterwards. The role closes, the next vacancy becomes urgent and our attention moves on. Understandably. There is usually someone waiting to ask whether we have “any more profiles.”

But if we want to improve quality of hire, we have to check how our decisions turned out.

A conversation a few months later can tell us a lot. Where is the person contributing? Where are they struggling? Which expectations were realistic, and which need revisiting?

The new colleague’s perspective matters, too. Did the interviews give them an accurate picture of the work? What helped them get started? What surprised them? What should we explain better to the next person?

I work at JOIN and recruit with it, so I appreciate having the interview feedback organised somewhere I can return to. The value comes from revisiting it with what we now know.

If an example gave us confidence in someone’s ability to lead a project, how did that translate into their work? If we had a concern, did it materialise? Did we spend an entire interview assessing something that turned out to have very little relevance to the job?

Those answers should improve the next job description, the next assessment and the next onboarding experience.

Otherwise, we keep collecting interview feedback without ever checking our own.

Celebrate twice

I am fully in favour of celebrating an accepted offer.

Recruiters have earned that moment. So have candidates, who have often completed the process alongside an existing job and a perfectly reasonable desire to have evenings.

Then leave room for a second celebration.

The moment when a new colleague has found their footing, is doing good work and is making the difference we hoped they would. When the team benefits from having them there, and the move feels worthwhile to them, too.

That is the outcome I want my recruitment work to contribute to.

So, with love to my colleagues: keep the confetti.

I’d just like a reason to use it again a few months later.