Closing the Gap Between Promise + Reality in the Candidate Experience

Have you ever started a new job that turns out to be nothing like you expected? Or hired someone who had that experience? Businesses grow on the backs of quality talent meeting places where that talent can thrive. That happens through a consistent and intentional candidate experience.

Gaps in the Candidate Experience

A recent survey of over two thousand workers commissioned by Glassdoor found that six in ten found aspects of their new job to completely fall short of expectations. The gaps between expectations and reality were across the board: job responsibilities, work hours and schedule, and even the company's culture and vision. 

While that particular study didn’t indicate whether the discrepancy resulted from deliberate or accidental actions, the outcome is the same: the new hire is smacked with a sense of regret related to taking the new job, and left with uncertain expectations and shaky trust about their future. Of course, starting out this way makes training, collaboration and becoming part of the team all the more difficult. Now we're engaged in an uphill battle to retain and engage the new hire.

Building a Candidate Experience that Educates and Engages

So how do we avoid these disconnects from the beginning? It starts with recruitment, and building a remarkable candidate experience within your hiring process. Some solutions are simple while others can impact not only new hires, but the overall direction of the company.

Understand the Reality of the Job

Before setting expectations, your company must define them.

• Have you operationalized what it takes to be successful in the job?

• Do you know what your workforce tends to like, find challenging, or struggle with the most early on?

Not much progress can happen without a clear understanding of the reality of the job. This can be done by interviewing job incumbents, defining competencies, and surveying your employee base. The key is to be honest about what the job experience is actually like. If you don’t like the experience, change it, but communicate and build a candidate experience that selects and engages for what you need. You are matching individuals to the real job experience, not what we hope it will be soon, and it is the quality of this experience that will determine how difficult it is for you to staff.

Be Intentional and Knowledgeable about Your Culture

Are you communicating the culture you aspire to build, or the one employees actually experience every day? Addressing this requires more than aspirations: you must clearly document what makes your culture unique and then consistently teach and reinforce it (within the hiring process and beyond) so that reality aligns with intent. The specifics matter.

Employees need to understand your organization’s values and beliefs, the commitments they make to one another and to stakeholders, and how all of this connects to organizational success. While this might feel like a substantial undertaking, the payoff goes well beyond setting realistic expectations for new hires—it is essential to safeguarding your brand as a whole. How to make this happen?

1. Pair candidates with culture ambassadors outside the hiring team.
   Schedule brief conversations with employees who are known for being transparent and who work in other departments or outside the candidate’s prospective team. Ask them to share what they appreciate most, what’s challenging, and what surprised them about the culture. Encourage candid Q&A so candidates hear a balanced view, not just the “official” message of the hiring manager and those closest to the decision. For example, when we hire consultants, candidates spend time talking with our developers to not only learn how the team truly works but also receive a fresh perspective of the culture.
2. Share real stories that illustrate values in action.
   Move beyond value statements on a wall by providing specific, recent examples of how decisions were made, conflicts were handled, or recognition was given that reflect your culture. For example, describe how a frontline manager responded when a guest experience went wrong, or how the team responded during a particularly busy season. We know storytelling is a powerful strategy for learning, sales, and beyond; it makes sense to apply it in recruitment.
3. Invite candidates to observe the work environment.
   When possible, have candidates shadow a shift, sit in on part of a team meeting, or join a pre-shift huddle. Even a short virtual tour or observation window lets them see communication styles, pace, and how leaders interact with the team. Prep employees to be genuine rather than “performing” for the candidate. Many food service and hospitality organizations we support maximize this strategy with templates and workflows to guide the shift observation. Include time before, during, and after for both the candidate and hiring manager to talk and ask questions. Videos sent to candidates early in the process that showcase the work environment can kickstart the process of setting accurate expectations of the role.
4. Be explicit about what works well—and what’s hard.
   During interviews and hiring conversations, consistently describe both the rewards and the most demanding aspects of the culture: pace, hours, feedback style, decision-making, and how change is handled. Use phrases like, “People who thrive here tend to…” and “People who struggle here usually…” to help candidates self-assess fit. If your candidates have completed a realistic job preview they are primed for this conversation. 
5. Use candidate questions as a window into culture.
   Encourage candidates to ask direct questions about topics that matter most to them—such as work-life integration, career growth, inclusion, or communication with leadership. Equip interviewers with prompts like, “Let me give you a concrete example,” so they respond with real examples and storytelling rather than general assurances. This helps candidates connect promises to lived experience.

Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

Communicate a Clear, Engaging and Consistent Message

Once you understand the reality of the job and your culture, it’s time to ensure every message to candidates and new hires accurately reflects that experience. Document what success truly looks like in the role and in your culture. Defining the competencies required for the position and your culture might be a good start. Candidate experience surveys can help you isolate under-performing or confusing moments within the hiring process. Then build intentional, repeatable touchpoints where that information is shared—during recruiting, selection, and onboarding.

• Use clear, straightforward language in all candidate and new-hire documentation so people at every level can quickly understand expectations.

• Rewrite job descriptions to emphasize:

  1. The purpose of the role

  2. What great performance looks like

  3. How the work connects to your culture and to customers/key stakeholders

  4. Replace long, dense task checklists with concise summaries of responsibilities tied to outcomes and impact.

• Rework content so it is easy to scan and act on (e.g., headings, bullets, short paragraphs, calls to action).

• Review all messaging to ensure it invites curiosity and questions—for example, include prompts such as “Ask us about…” or “Let’s talk about how this works day-to-day.”

• Build in touchpoints (interviews, onboarding sessions, follow-up conversations) where candidates and new hires can ask questions, so they are more likely to truly understand and remember the message.

Equally important is consistency. Whether the message is shared in one-on-ones, during interviews, through onboarding materials, via realistic job previews, or in automated communications, the core story about the job and culture should remain the same. If people leaders or culture ambassadors are sharing the message, ensure they are on the same page and confident explaining it in similar terms. This level of clarity and consistency rallies everyone behind the same vision, strengthens your employment brand, and reduces the costly disconnects that lead to early turnover.

Start Early and Reinforce the Message Throughout the Candidate Experience

If you wait until after you’ve hired someone to discuss expectations and culture, you’re already too late. Those conversations should begin with a candidate’s very first interaction with your organization—ideally as early in the hiring process as possible. Doing this delivers two key benefits: you attract candidates who are a strong fit while discouraging those who are not, and you save time by narrowing the pool sooner.

You can accomplish this by using technology and/or formal steps in your hiring process to communicate the realities of the role with a clear, engaging, and consistent message. Many of the organizations we support, for example, use realistic job previews early in the process to share information about the benefits of working with the organization, expectations that may be demanding or unique, and defining characteristics of the culture. Simple and realistic ways to reinforce messaging throughout the candidate experience and beyond might look like:

• Add a short “expectations and culture” section to every job posting that clearly describes the realities of the role, what success looks like, and how the culture shows up day-to-day.

• Build a realistic job preview (brief video, one-pager, or interactive module connected to your application) and share it with candidates early in the process—before final interviews or offers.

• Standardize how hiring managers talk about expectations and culture with an interview guide that includes key messages, specific examples, and prompts like “People who thrive here tend to…”

• Incorporate questions about expectations and culture into each interview stage, and train interviewers to answer with concrete, recent examples rather than general statements. Consider using a structured interview, or how you can build tools, like interview question banks, that add more consistency and structure to interviews across your organization.

• Use onboarding to reinforce the same core messages about role expectations and culture through welcome sessions, manager one-on-ones, and early performance check-ins.

• Align performance reviews, rewards, and development conversations to the expectations you set during hiring so employees see a clear, consistent throughline from recruiting to daily work.

• Regularly ask new hires (e.g., at 30, 60, and 90 days) where their experience matches or differs from what was promised, and use that feedback to refine job previews and messaging. Bonus points for using that as an opportunity to give culture-and-job specific feedback to the new employee on their performance.

This communication cannot be a one-time event. It needs to continue throughout onboarding and into the daily experience of the job. Rewards, performance evaluations, development opportunities, and other talent processes are key touchpoints for reinforcing the expectations and core values you shared from the outset. When those messages are connected, they not only stay consistent but become our lived reality.

Earlier we noted that more than half of respondents in a recent survey reported their job did not match the expectations that were set for them. Those gaps aren't inevitable. By intentionally taking steps to close the gap between promise and reality, you protect your employment brand, culture, and create an environment where each employee can flourish in addition to your enterprise.

Featured Image by Unsplash+ In collaboration with Getty Images