This paper describes an action research project designed to improve candidate interview procedures at a healthcare services organization. Motivated by poor employee retention rates and frequent mismatches between new hires and organizational culture, the project engages stakeholders across all levels of the company to evaluate and compare multiple interviewing approaches. Drawing on respondent-driven sampling methodology, the project collects both qualitative and quantitative data — including retention rates, performance evaluations, and exit interviews — to identify the interviewing strategy most likely to improve cultural fit, productivity, and long-term employee retention. The paper also outlines stakeholder roles, project scope, data collection methods, and a critical mass analysis to support successful implementation.
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 promises both a good cultural fit and a 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 policies, better reflect policy intent, and tap into institutional knowledge and individual skills. This paper describes an action research project designed to explore several options for interviewing candidates for open positions, culminating in the selection of a preferred option for conducting interviews.
The organization at the center of this project is determined to improve the effectiveness of its candidate interview processes as one component of a broader plan to "continue to develop and build internal capabilities." The employee retention rate is not at a level that contributes to organizational sustainability, and in some departments, it falls short of contributing substantially to revenue generation. The processes of recruiting, hiring, and training employees are associated with high costs, which are reasonable when amortized over eight to ten years, but become unsustainable when absorbed in just two to three years. Management 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 undertaking an action research project that will explore several approaches for strengthening the interview processes central to its 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 available 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 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 by reducing excess expenditures 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).
"Key leadership stakeholders and their organizational roles"
"Participant selection, timelines, and research 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 directed at the practice problem. Barring substantial emerging barriers or reconsideration of the timeline by the action research participants, data collection is anticipated to take approximately six months to complete.
The work of the action research project will be prepared in manuscript form in order to contribute the findings to conference proceedings. Attending regular staff meetings to discuss the project serves as a priming method, which has been shown in earlier research to have strong influence on the presence of assessment practices within human resources departments.
The project data will necessarily be long-term, since it is crucial to review the success of employees hired via each of the various approaches to interviews and selection. 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, considering retention rates, length of employment, 360-degree performance evaluation data, pre- and post-hire interviews of selected candidates, and exit interviews where indicated (Carvin, 2009).
The collection of data from interviews and during the evaluation period will include information indicating skills, cultural fit, and network fit. Network fit refers to how well a new colleague works with those who are responsible for or who support the implementation of the relevant policy or practice. Transcripts of the interviews will be reviewed for references to knowledge, values, career experience, and leader behavior. Measures of fit will consider two types of style: conformist — according to the in-house team's judgment — and complementary, which is expected to result in some "productive disruption in the way the current team is working" (Martin, 2015).
The utility of action research as an approach to meaningfully engage stakeholders in organizational change is applied here to the problem of ineffective candidate interviews for the selection of new employees. The method known as respondent-driven sampling is proposed as strategically superior to snowball sampling due to its increased ability to control for bias. Through this participatory approach, the organization aims to develop interviewing procedures that improve retention, enhance cultural fit, and support long-term organizational sustainability.
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