I suppose there are two ways to think about this, quality as an input or quality as an output.
Going down the rout of quality as an input this would require that you secure links from HR related sites. Both you and the webmasters of those sites would have to deem each others sites as non competitive and the site linking to you would not require a link back. (very little value in reciprocals these days). You would want absolute control over the anchor text and the link should appear as early as possible within the source code and be contextual i.e. placed within the main body copy of the linking page. (very little value in footer links these days either)
In an ideal world every link to your site would match these criteria; however I would imagine the number of pages that would qualify on all scores is extremely finite. The expense in time alone required to locate and secure this type of link would be considerable.
One should also consider quality as an output i.e. increased organic search engine visibility and increased levels of traffic via the links we place. Approaching linking building from this angle opens up many different avenues for consideration, but for the sake of simplicity I will stick to article syndication. With article syndication it is common that the Page Title, The H1Tag, The URL and the anchor text of the internal links that point to a published article to be parsed from the title of the article you are syndicating. So, although article submission sites are not HR sites per say much of the basic SEO requirements are covered making the page highly relevant at the document level.
Also consider the benefit of utilising a diverse IP set. For example a .co.uk hosted in the UK is at a distinct disadvantage when someone is searching for information from an American or Australian IP. Article syndication allows your content to be syndicated via multiple non geographic TLDs on diverse IPs in every country thus making your content much more accessible to the localisation many search engines apply to their results.
Finally there is the content itself, you get to say exactly what you want in the language that you choose while precisely targeting the market and customers you want.
I am not suggesting that you should stop looking for quality as an input rather that you also consider quality as an output.