As a HR professional, I talk to many business owners about the importance of employee retention. A revolving door of new hires is expensive to a company, eating away at their bottom line profits and company morale. When hiring new staff, introducing a Realistic Job Preview to your interview process may be a big step towards stabilizing turnover due to better job/person fit.
I see it all the time, employees leaving a business within a couple of months, citing a disconnect from what they thought the job would be like vs. what they actually experienced after hire. A Realistic job Preview (RJP) creates the scenario that places the candidate in the true situation they will experience– the good, the bad, and the ugly. No more exit interviews with comments like, “I had no idea I would be interrupted by the phone so often while trying to do my work”, or “I was hoping I would have more face to face contact than I ended up having.” If the candidate is properly coached in the RJP process they will recognize a potential poor job fit and self-eliminate before you invest in someone who would have bailed anyway.
And, although we frame the RJP as a decision making tool for the candidate, it is the best opportunity the hiring manager has to really dig into the attitudes and experiences of the candidate beyond their canned “interview responses”. As the candidate will be more relaxed, the hiring manager will also be able to get a sense of how the potential employee will “fit”. I always refer to it as the Final Stage of the interview process and it is no less important than any other.
Indisputably, a well-executed RJP will
