¶ … Action Research to Identify Superior Candidate Interviewing Procedures GM505 Action Research and Consulting Skills

Recruitment, selection, and hiring are two of the primary pillars on which strong companies are built, and they are also some of the most challenging activities that enterprises face with regard to execution. In order to embed effective recruitment and selection strategies in the standard operations of human resources, stakeholder engagement is essential. In many organizations, stakeholders actively participate in the interview processes used to select the "best fit" candidates from the pool of potential new hires. However, even though candidate interviews may be structured and conducted in a systematic fashion, the interviews may not be designed to actually select the most qualified individual who appears to promise both a good cultural fit and high level of productivity.

Action research is one approach to determining how to best conduct candidate interviews. Action research is often used to explore key business procedures in order to identify changes that would serve to strengthen the policies, better reflect the policy intent, and tap into institutional knowledge and individual skills. This paper describes an action research project at Luke and Associates that is designed to explore several options for interviewing candidates for open positions, and to culminate in the selection of a preferred option for conducting interviews.

Scope and Purpose

Luke and Associates is determined to improve the effectiveness of its candidate interview processes as one leg of their plan to "continue to develop and build internal capabilities" ("Luke & Associates," 2015). The employee retention rate at Luke & Associates is not at a level that contributes to sustainability, and in some departments, is not at a level that contributes substantially to revenue generation. The processes of recruiting, hiring, and training employees are associated with high costs, which are reasonable when they are amortized over eight to ten years, but the costs are not sustainable when they must be absorbed in just two to three years. Management at Luke & Associates has expressed concern about the retention rate and the frequent poor fit between new hires, the company culture, and the demands of positions with respect to demonstrated skills and fundamental knowledge. To address these issues, the company is considering an action research project that will explore several approaches for strengthening the interview processes that are central to the firm's recruitment efforts.

Action research, a form of participatory research, engages the stakeholders who are impacted by processes, programs, and policies associated with particular issues or conditions that are aspects of their professional lives (Tiffany, 2006). The purposes of action research are typically to make a formal critical thinking inquiry about a practice problem, to identify the best of the alternatives, and to describe an implementation plan that has a solid chance of being adopted by stakeholders. According to Tiffany (2009), action research "seeks to generate knowledge that can be used to prompt collective action and change; its premise is that research should be useful to communities, organizations, programs and participants at the same time as contributing to the academic and disciplinary literatures" (p.1). Action research is described as an "empowering experience" primarily because it is "always relevant to the participants…because the focus of each research project is determined by the researchers, who are also the primary consumers of the findings" (Sagor, 2000).

The action research project for Luke & Associates would be conducted under the aegis of the human resources department, with strong endorsement and support from executive management and substantive participation by employees across all levels of the company. The focus of the action research is improvement of the interviewing process such that the company's retention rate is significantly improved, productivity is enhanced, and revenue is positively impacted due to excess expenditures to address the churn caused by low employee retention.

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) "produces more reliable data than convenience or snowball samples" largely because it controls for subject selection bias by considering data related to the sizes of personal networks and the recruiting patterns used (Tiffany, 2009). The values that undergird participatory research are well aligned with respondent-driven sampling since it allows participants to assume a substantial role in recruiting and uses the participants' social networks (Tiffany, 2009). In addition, high levels of participation in the processes that result in a research sample provide opportunities for stakeholders to dialogue about important considerations such as "data integrity, informed consent, and the overall aims of the research" (Tiffany, 2009, p. 1).

Stakeholders

The stakeholders' perspectives regarding the action research project will serve as a for understanding social and personal factors against a backdrop of rational factors (Lagace, 2000). Understanding someone's individual perspective can help a project build the critical mass needed to improve the likelihood of success. In regards to Luke and Associates, the three stakeholders identified below have similar views about operations that are undoubtedly based on their faith and their unwavering desire to help others. This can serve as an organizational asset in the sense that many projects will already have some level of critical mass already developed in a small, but unified, leadership team.
When examining a company and providing analysis, it pays to look first at the leadership of a company. Co-owner and co-founder, Jim Barfield, who has held important positions with Fortune 500 companies and has lived his life, (the majority of his life) on the Space Coast of Florida, according to the company's website. When you grow up around the American space program, if you're Jim Barfield, it gets in your blood and you find ways to provide support and service to the military programs that are part of the space program. Barfield has his master's degree in Public Health from the University of South Florida, so it makes sense that Luke & Associates are geared to provide high quality healthcare services to the military in Florida's Space Coast. He has been involved with business, with volunteerism, with organizing groups to provide services to those less fortunate.

Rich Hall is the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Information Officer for Luke & Associates; he is also a co-owner / co-founder with Barfield. He has been responsible for building Luke & Associates into a "full-service Microsoft Certified Partner, so clearly Hall understands the value of being on the cutting edge of digital technology. Sherri Scott, according to the company website, is the VP for government services. Her career had embraced healthcare science and research, so she is in the right place at the right time.

Appraisal and Involvement

When it was learned that a substantial number of candidate interviews take place over the phone, the topic of candidate interviews rose to the forefront as a reasonable focus for action research that lent itself well to critical thinking inquiry. The selection of participants was primarily based on an assessment of key management personnel, and a determination by those working on the conceptualization of the project that these actors bring essential skills, knowledge, and influence to the project.

Expectations

Action research participants have considerable leeway with regard to the progression of the project in which they are engaged. Rather than relying on a top-down approach in which expectations are articulated and passed down from management or academic partners to the research participants, action research participants set those standards and expectations collectively. The aim is to provide the best data in a timely fashion in a manner that answers the research questions that are directed at the practice problem. Barring substantial emerging barriers or reconsideration of the timeline by the action research participants, the data will be collected during the action research project which is anticipated to take six months to complete.

Plan to obtain data

The project data will necessarily be long-term since it crucial to review the success of employees hired via each of the various approaches to interviews and selection of new hires. The action research team will engage as participant observers on interview panels during scheduled interviews of candidates for positions. The data will be both qualitative and quantitative as it will consider retention rates, length of employment, 360 degree performance evaluation data, and pre- and post-interviews of selected candidates, and exit interviews where indicated (Carvin, 2009).

The collection of data from interviews and during the evaluation period will include data that indicates skills, cultural fit, and network fit. That is to say, the network fit will indicate how well the new colleague works with those who are responsible for or provide support for the implementation of the policy or practice problem. Transcripts of the interviews will be reviewed to look for reference to knowledge, values, career experience, and leader behavior. Measures of fit will consider two types of style: conformist -- according to the in-house team judgment -- and complementary, which is expected to result in some "productive disruption in the way the current team is working"(Martin, 2015).

Laying the groundwork

The work of the action research project will be prepared in manuscript form in order to continue to include the…