Why The Entry Interview Should Be Essential In Your Employee Onboarding
The Entry Interview is one of the best onboarding tools you can use.
Many organization overlook the entry interview as an onboarding tool.
Most organizations only make use of the exit interview. While helpful, is a “too little, too late” approach that doesn’t give you a lot of insight.
The entry interview gives you insights into what new employees need to succeed.
It goes a LONG way in showing how much you care.
In my list of of employee onboarding ideas your organization can use, I wrote a brief synopsis about the value of the entry interview.
Here, I will expand upon it in greater detail and how your organization can make use of it.
What Will This Guide Cover On The Entry Interview?
- What Is An Entry Interview?
- Why Should You Have An Entry Interview?
- What Kind Of Questions Should You Be Asking In An Entry Interview?
1. What Is An Entry Interview?
Most of us I’m sure are familiar with the exit interview. We may have conducted many of them, or been the one answering the questions.
No, an entry interview is not part of finding out if they’re the right person for the job. You’ve already done that.
When I’ve mentioned to people about the entry interview, a common response I get is the following:
Didn’t we just do this in the job interview? Why do this again?
There’s are several reasons why.
- You can ask a different set of questions than you would for interviewing someone for the role. Now that they’re hired, you can ask a different set of questions to get better insight into who they are.
- Their answers will differ. Questions asked during the job interview will have different responses. It’s human nature. We answer these questions in the way that makes us best to be the ones selected. Don’t deny it. We’ve all done it before.
Having an entry interview early in their employee journey goes a long way in building a relationship. Whether its day one, week one, or month one. An entry interview helps set them up for success.
One thing that you should always be thinking about in the employee experience are the following three questions, which I mentioned in my guide to employee journey mapping:
- What is the employee trying to do?
- What is the employee feeling and thinking?
- What barriers are getting in the employee’s way?
The key takeaway that you want to look for of these three questions in the entry interview is the barriers that can get in their way.
2. Why Should You Have An Entry Interview?
Why should you make use of the entry interview? Let’s take a look at some stats, and some success stories of making use of the entry interview.
Surveymonkey did some great research on the entry interview, which you can find here: Employee entry interviews: Adam Grant’s survey for matching jobs to people
85% enjoyed the experience, two-thirds (65%) found it helpful, and another 26% said it was ‘reassuring’.
Among the four in ten who have not had an entry interview, 41% would definitely like to have one in their next job and another 40% are on the fence.
Less than 11% would prefer not to have one.
There are some really interesting findings from this little bit here about the entry interview.
56% of American workers surveyed had experienced an entry interview during their careers. It’s hard to get a gauge on how many organizations make use of the entry interview which I was hoping to find, but c’est la vie.
For those who had not experienced an entry interview, there was a split on whether they would want one. This could bemanyf reasons, and I wish the survey went more into why that’s the case, but again, c’est la vie.
Let’s take a look more at some case studies of the entry interview in action.
This comes from the following: The ‘Entry’ Interview: Why Wait Until Employees Leave?
Other patients were put on hold for 20 minutes at a time. Those who finally landed an appointment were often scheduled with the wrong doctors.
I was asked to diagnose and solve the problem. After two days of observing and interviewing employees, I made a startling discovery: 92 percent of the employees joined the company because they were hoping to pursue careers in healthcare as nurses and doctors. They needed to pay bills and support their families while they were applying for the relevant education and training, so they chose a call center at a medical clinic.
Since not a single leader or manager was aware of this, the employees never gained any exposure to medical knowledge, and they felt frustrated, devalued and burned out.
They came up with solutions to address issues. It was through the entry interviews that they were able to start identifying what employees were looking for in the role.
With that, the call center turned around and did far better.
Here is an article that comes form Thrive Global, founded by Arianna Huffington:
Because without becoming curious about the people who join our organizations from the very outset, we may overlook important parts of each other’s lives.
Huffington recalls, for example, an employee who said that taking her daughter to school at 7:30 a.m. every day was important to her. Well, in her previous job, her boss always scheduled calls at 7:30, so she wasn’t able to share that cherished time with her children.
Another new employee said it was important that she attend physical therapy appointments regularly to tend to her frozen shoulder. When Huffington asked her when she had last been to therapy, the employee said three months ago.
It’s easy to see, through these examples, how entry interviews “can strengthen employees’ feelings that managers value and care about them, which is an important driver of satisfaction, performance, and retention,”
So with all that, let’s get into how to conduct these entry interviews.
3. What Kind Of Questions Should You Be Asking In An Entry Interview?
There’s a million different kind of questions you can ask here, but let’s start with what your goals should be with the entry interview.
With the entry interview, you want to accomplish the following:
- Get a better insight into what the new employee needs to succeed
- Reassure them that they’ve made the right choice in joining your organization
- Eliminate any barriers that can get in their way
- Identify their strengths to amplify in their role
How you want to go about this is up to you, but I’ll help get you started. Stay away from yes or no questions, and keep them open-ended.
If they mention something interesting, don’t be afraid to drop the other questions you have to get more insight into what they said. This is a great time to make use of the Five Whys technique to dig deeper into what they just said.
On that note, here are some possible questions that you can ask in these entry interviews:
- What is your learning style like?
- What are some things that you can foresee getting in your way when getting settled into your role?
- What kind of feedback do you need? How often would you like to get feedback?
- What do you feel you can bring to the organization?
- How hands-on do you want us to be?
- What are things that have worked for you in the past when getting started? What didn’t?
- How do you handle conflict?
- Where do you see yourself in X amount of years?
- Tell us more about yourself.
- What are your career goals?
- What flavor of ice cream would you be?
- What makes a good manager for you?
Some of these are more in-depth, some are quick answers, and some are more silly (the ice cream flavor is optional). It’s a list to get you started. Remember, if they bring up something noteworthy, don’t be afraid to dig in further into what they said.
As well, you’ll notice that several of these questions are common in job interviews. As mentioned earlier, you’ll get different answers now that they’re hired. So don’t be afraid to bring them up again.
Conclusion & Next Steps
We’ve taken a look at the following:
- What Is An Entry Interview?
- Why Should You Have An Entry Interview?
- What Kind Of Questions Should You Be Asking In An Entry Interview?
That should be enough to get you started on getting the entry interview up and running.
Have a new employee that’s starting soon, or just started? Now would be a great time to make use of it.
Want another good way of creating a better onboarding experience? Make use of the 30-60-90 day plan, which I’ve written about here.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any more insights or questions that can be asked in the entry interview, leave a comment below!
