Don’t underestimate the importance of exit interviews

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IIf you’ve seen any news this past year, you know that we’re currently knee-deep in one of the tightest job markets in years. It all started in the spring of 2021, when burned-out workers sparked an unprecedented layoff, leaving millions of jobs open. Then something funny happened. After having to undergo massive layoffs and downsizing in the previous year, employers suddenly couldn’t find anyone willing to fill their new vacancies.

In August 2021, 73 percent of employers said they were having difficulty attracting talent. Six months later, job openings were still above 11 million, while unemployment rates reached their lowest level since before the pandemic. Put another way: The opportunities are there; the workers just don’t care. Why?

It would not be fair or right to blame this situation entirely on Covid-19 and the resulting economic consequences. Well before Covid-19 entered the lexicon, research showed that attracting high-quality candidates was a significant challenge for 76 percent of recruiters. Then there is the factor of declining birth rates over the years: we have more people retiring and consuming goods, with fewer newcomers entering the market. To solve this seemingly persistent problem, company leaders need to take a hard look at their recruiting and hiring processes. And to find the answers they seek, they must use their greatest asset: their people.

The root of recruitment problems

The fact is that attracting top talent to join your ranks will always be a challenge, but you may be experiencing recruitment issues if your company:

Missing vision: More than ever, employees are looking for employers who share their core values ​​and treat them with genuine interest, care and concern – most of our current employees were ‘won’ because they were passionate about our core values, even when they had competing offers from others companies. Prospective employees want to feel heard and seen, and they want to be able to join your mission. In the past few years, workers have become more selective about opportunities to work for companies without a clear set of values. However, the global pandemic in particular has been a wake-up call for many people who no longer wish to spend their lives working for companies that do not align with their personal values.

Missing intent: When you build a culture that people love to be a part of, it shows – and your recruiters can point to the social proof that your company is a great place to work. However, companies that hire only to fill capacity gaps are not building their culture with intent. As a result, they reach a point where their company is no longer an attractive place to work. So they turn their attention to increased wages and flashy bonuses, but when that well inevitably runs dry, employees who have no other reason to stay will move on. That’s why we hire around our core values, along with unique talents, skills and perspectives that add to our existing company culture. Even before hiring, consider centering rewards and recognition around building your company culture. We use “core values ​​calls” to encourage and support team members who actively live our core values, which tells our employees that this is not just talk – we are intentionally cultivating a healthy work culture.

Missing option: Your employees want you to invest in them as much as they invest in you. You can prove you’re “all in” through growth and learning opportunities that help employees advance their skills and areas of career curiosity. Applicants are likely to pass up jobs that appear to have low opportunities, and the Pew Research Center found that nearly two-thirds of workers who left jobs in 2021 did so because there were no opportunities for advancement. Even if you don’t have these opportunities internally, sponsor employees who seek them externally. For example, we allocate a budget to allow several of our employees to invest in development events, whether they are career-related conferences, certification classes, or general ongoing courses in their field.

Missing expectations: Employees won’t stick around if success at a company feels like an unwinnable game. Employers need to be 100 percent clear about role expectations, experience requirements and what success looks like as quickly as possible. Otherwise, you’ll find candidates dropping out halfway through the hiring process, or worse, employees leaving after only a few months on the job. We had one such case where a former employee told us during the exit interview that they felt what they brought to the table was not aligned with management’s vision for the role. After hearing this, we revised our objectives for the role and rewrote the job description to match. As an employer, the onus is on us to make sure we’re recruiting success, and a huge part of that is making sure we’re clear and consistent about job expectations.

Lacks insight: We know recruiting issues can seem daunting, but rushing to fill positions isn’t the right move either. We recently hired a classically trained person at our company to check every box (or so we thought). However, it wasn’t until we hired her that we realized she was too corporate for our entrepreneurial culture. While she was still aiming at her target, we had already shot 10 arrows from the bow. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work out and after that experience we realized we needed to slow down. If you don’t have the right person, it’s better to wait until you do, rather than firing an employee down the road because they weren’t the right choice in the first place.

It starts at the end

To get an accurate picture of your recruiting process and its shortcomings, you need to take an honest look at the above pitfalls and determine if they apply to your workplace. This is not an exercise just for the C-Suite. Instead, you should roll it out across the organization to create a constant feedback loop. Exit interviews help leaders navigate the current direction of their company. They also generate questions that recruiters can use in the hiring process to understand if a candidate is a good fit.

Exit interviews can reveal a host of issues to help you improve your processes and procedures. Our company has experienced these benefits first hand. After hearing from several former employees in their exit interviews that they felt blindsided by sudden company-wide changes, we rolled out mid-quarter updates. Their responses helped to reveal a flaw we hadn’t identified before and indicated that we need to have more care and concern for our internal employees. By conducting these checks, we have improved our culture of open, consistent communication even in a virtual organization. Employees were able to submit open-ended questions, allowing for healthy feedback loops among the entire team.

However, constant change is inevitable in our company, so we knew the new hires had to welcome it – at least on some level. To this end, we also used their exit interview responses to develop interview questions that would help us gauge someone’s appetite for change. Our recruiters started asking questions like, “How did you handle the last big change in your life?” and “How do you stop yourself from falling in love with your own ideas?”

Additionally, we reverse-engineered prompts like, “Tell me about a time when you felt like you had the right plan, but things went downhill. How did you identify the problem and how did you correct course?” It’s about formulating questions you can ask in advance to prevent the wrong person from taking the wrong seat.

When you’re looking for ways to improve your hiring and recruiting process, exit interviews may not immediately come to mind. However, they are an excellent opportunity to hold a mirror up to your company and see what works and what doesn’t. You can then adapt your business for the betterment of your team and the customers you serve.

Kelly Knight is an expert at building teams. Having spent 20 years in the financial services industry managing and leading dynamic organizations, Knight has served as EOS Worldwide Integrator since 2016. Mark O’Donnell is the visionary at EOS Worldwide and is passionate about helping entrepreneurs get what they want from their enterprises. O’Donnell is a four-time Inc. 500 | 5000 entrepreneur with experience in high growth organizations.

This article was adapted from www.ChiefExecutive.net with permission from The CEO. © 2022. All rights reserved.