Struggling with higher turnover rates for first-year employees? Discover how a Realistic Job Preview (RJP) will educate and attract high potential talent.
Cover photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
The full cost of turnover.
Before we introduce the potential of realistic job previews let's look at how turnover unfolds up close.
Imagine a thriving company where employees feel valued and motivated. Now, picture Sarah, a top-performing and newly hired sales manager. After a year with the company she restarts her job search and decides to leave for a competitor. There were a few reasons for her decision, namely that the compensation plan was different from what she believed it would be at the outset, and she was expected to spend more time on non-sales activities than she had before.
The immediate financial impact of Sarah's decision is sobering. The company must invest in recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement, which can cost up to 150% of Sarah's annual salary. Meanwhile, productivity dips as the team adjusts to the change, and sales targets are missed.
But the costs go beyond the financial. Sarah's departure sends ripples through operations and the company's culture. Her colleagues, who admired her leadership and support, feel a sense of loss and uncertainty. Morale drops, a once cohesive team starts to fragment, and engagement languishes. The trust and collaboration that took years to build with tenured employees are now at risk.
Moreover, the knowledge and expertise Sarah took with her are tough to replace. The organization had hoped they could rely on her growth and continued contributions long-term. The new hire, no matter how skilled, will need time to acclimate and may never fully replicate the skills and contributions Sarah would have achieved. The knowledge gap they must manage in the next year can lead to mistakes, lagging engagement for Sarah's team, and missed opportunities, further affecting the company's bottom line.
In essence, turnover is not just a financial burden; it disrupts the very fabric of the organization, diminishing culture, morale, and long-term success. Addressing these costs requires an intense and strategic approach to employee retention that starts with how we hire, attract, and educate applicants.
What is a Realistic Job Preview?
While no one piece of HR or recruiting technology can universally solve this problem, realistic job previews are an often overlooked component of a solution. RJPs represent a spectrum of experiences for candidates that deliver a transparent and honest look at the job's demands, challenges, and culture often before they enter the application process in earnest. Companies that use our own RJPs see higher retention, stronger engagement, and improved hiring efficiency. This happens by giving candidates a clear, honest preview of the role, sharing both the rewards and difficulties they'll face. By doing this we can build trust, improve retention, and attract employees who are truly the right fit. If our goal is to provide a realistic preview for candidates we can use any number of approaches. This could involve -
- Video, perhaps providing a view of the work environment (valuable for production roles working in fast paced kitchens or manufacturing environments), or testimonials with employees candidly sharing both the highlights and struggles they manage on a day to day basis. The United States' TSA has one we feel does a great job at this for security officers.
- Written testimonials and content that could be shared not just on your online careers page but within the application, and even become a part of physical brochures that could be shared at a job fair or at an interview.
- Simulations and assessments. These tools, often online, either place the candidate in critical scenarios they will encounter on job, or ask direct questions about their preferences and ideal ways of working. With our solutions, candidates are usually told their responses will not be shared with the employer allowing them to understand how their true preferences and goals match the role. After receiving feedback, regardless of their responses to the questions candidates are always welcome to continue with the next step in the hiring process.
- Job Observation. Often there isn't substitute for seeing the work environment up close. On the job observations, sometimes called shift follows, are another method to consider. If you're bringing a candidate in for an interview shadowing someone on the job for an appropriate amount of time might be attainable and, if done before the interview, allow for richer questions and conversation.
With the ease of applying for a job, and the imperative to maximize available talent, considering how we can educate and inform candidates is too often overlooked. Most of us (upwards of three-quarters of the workforce) are comfortable pursuing a position when we don't match all the qualifications. This is fantastic - and increases opportunity and contributes to richer applicant pools. However, when that's not met by steps to both educate applicants about how our core values are reinforced through our culture and the nature of job requirements, we're likely to fall short on key results for new hire engagement, performance, and retention. We're also missing an opportunity engage and attract applicants with high potential for performance and growth.
In short, our goal is to minimize disappointment, and the languishing engagement that comes from it after onboarding. This is often called the 'honeymoon hangover,' which comes after the initial excitement and satisfaction new employees feel. It's when they start to notice that the job or culture isn't quite what they expected.
This can spiral into early turnover, disengagement, and and just plain frustration for both the employee and the employer. The costs associated with the honeymoon hangover are not just financial but also emotional and cultural. Employees who experience this post-hire disappointment may become disillusioned and less motivated, which affects their peers, teams, and the ability to achieve key business results.
Now, think about the obstacles and roadblocks that most frequently cause that disappointment. What aspects of the job and your culture lead to lackluster performance in new hires? This is information that can be communicated to candidates through any one of a myriad of realistic job preview experiences.
Here's a short list of job expectations and qualities we've built into RJPs for organizations across industries:
- Nuts and bolts requirements: hours per week expected, availability, expectations for uniforms, time standing, taking care of customers, and traveling. Importantly, the 'why' behind each of these and how it supports your mission can be shared with candidates. See the example below asking about schedule availability.
- Cultural values and expectations: We place candidates in what we like to call, critical incidents. These are frequently occurring events that are core to the success of your business. Candidates have several options for responding. These critical incidents could involve your way of working together as a team or supporting your customers. Note the example below about the workload requirements. Candidates are then given feedback specific to your organization and the role based on their response.
- Data and Social Proof: Preview materials can share metrics from recent employee engagement surveys, metrics of key results you can share, and employee testimonials (through video or in written form). Below we share a snippet from online and written content adapted from one of the healthcare organizations we serve sharing information about the work environment.
Real-time Candidate Feedback
While content within the application process is valuable, RJPs taking the form of online assessments and simulations carry a few key advantages.
- Every candidate not only views the information but must engage with it.
- Candidate receive individualized feedback on their responses.
- Insights at the group level (as the individual candidate responses are kept confidential) giving you a forecast of the candidate population (e.g., work hour availability, preferences).
ensure every candidate not only views (but engages!) with the content , we often build interactive experiences for candidates that deliver feedback in real-time.
Importantly, candidates are always welcomed to apply after the RJP: even if their responses miss the mark on each criterion. This is why the RJP is so powerful: its transparency enables candidates to make more informed decisions about whether the often-overlooked demands of the role suit them, ultimately leading to greater job satisfaction and reduced turnover.
The Benefits of Implementing an RJP
Implementing an RJP can bring multiple benefits to your organization:
- An informed and engaged applicant pool. The average applicant completes 27 applications for every interview. RJPs make sure that all candidates are engaging and connecting with information about your culture, operations, and expectations. When I was a college professor I learned that feeling that I was overcommunicating was the recipe to ensure expectations were understood. The same lesson applies here.
- Stronger candidate experience. As we shared earlier, realistic job previews, are often forgotten when building a hiring process. A job preview, in whatever form you can consistently execute, not only educates candidates but sets you apart from those 20+ other organizations, on average, a candidate is exploring.
- Faster and more efficient onboarding. With RJPs your new hires will have envisioned themselves in the role more deeply and with greater accuracy. They'll be primed and prepared for the unexpected hurdles that would usually hinder the progress of the new hires that came before them.
- Lower turnover. By addressing hurdles to retention early, in the hiring process, we're able to move the needle on one of our main goals: turnover. RJPs are often implemented with other solutions, like assessments and interviews, so their direct effects can be hard to isolate. Industry research shares that RJPs contribute to around a ten percent reduction in turnover. This is similar to our own studies which finds turnover reduction of 13 percent when the effect of the RJP can be separated from other steps of the hiring process.
- Stronger cultural connection with new hires. Part of the gain in retention is because we're building a pool of candidates excited and ready to live our culture. When we build RJPs we take an evidence-based approach to understanding the culture of the organization and how it affects what's needed on day one to be successful.
How to Create an Effective Realistic Job Preview
It might be overwhelming to consider how you can create a unique experience to educate all your candidates. Here are some questions to begin the process:
- First, what job groups will be included in the preview?
- Next, gain an understanding of critical incidents: what are examples and events of great success and failure early in the employee journey?
- If you have competencies outlined for this job group, what is linked to success or failure in those areas? Document the core requirements of the role that often cause a challenge early on. Ask recruiters and hiring managers what they find frustrating that candidates do not understand, or even more importantly, what new hires do not understand or are unprepared to deliver.
This information will be crucial in building an RJP that truly reflects the realities of the job and differentiates your organization as trusted, authentic, and one that will genuinely care about the success and well-being of employees.
Guidelines for Continuous Improvement of Your RJP Program
Set yourself up for success by benchmarking your intended results before and after implementation. For sales positions we've reviewed first quarter post-training sales results for hires with a new RJP to evaluate success. If you're supporting a high volume role with evergreen hiring you'll be able to see results and make improvements quickly.
Beyond the numbers, the importance of gathering and utilizing candidate feedback is crucial. By consistently updating the RJP process based on input from new hires, you're poised to build on your success and improve the RJP experience. Analyzing costs related to the hiring process before and after RJP implementation justifies the investment and assures you that the solution is effective. This ongoing refinement not only improves the candidate experience but strategically builds a more engaged workforce grounded in a shared definition of success and means to achieve it.
Want more information on building and implementing your own Realistic Job Preview? Access our guide.