Now that’s debatable! The moot question is – Where does the demarcation lie between the recruitment and the onboarding process? If you ask me, onboarding actually starts during the recruitment process, when you are interviewing and assessing the potential hire and extends well beyond the usual probation period of 6 months!

How are we devising an effective feedback mechanism to know the effectiveness of our recruitment processes?

Recruitment plays an important role in setting up the right expectations of the prospective employees. These first interactions between the candidate and the organization set the tone for how they perceive the employer brand and culture. An interview feedback form only gives a partial view of how the candidate experience has been through a specific process of hiring. The impact of mismatched expectations and wrong hires goes well beyond that. Most HR teams devise a 30/60 days feedback process and the focus is to know how the employee is liking the workplace and whether or not the new hire is getting enough support. The process of transition actually takes longer! A new hire generally takes well over six months to settle down.

30-day follow-up

Firstly, organizations must use the 30-day follow-up meeting with the candidate to also know whether there are any surprises or not. Is this what they expected when they accepted the offer? Secondly, the Manager of the new hire should also be asked whether or not the new hire meets the desired expectations. Has there been a welcome or not-so-welcome surprise in the first 30 days of joining?

6-month follow-up

This is the about the time when the new employee gets a hang of his new responsibilities.   This is when you can comfortably pose questions on which parts of their new role are they liking the most, which are they okay with and which parts of the job do they dislike the most? This acts as the whistle of the pressure cooker. If something is not hunky-dory, this is when the new employee will let off some steam and you will still have time for some corrective action. Again the manager of the new hire should not be left out. This is also about the time when most organizations initiate the process of confirmation. It is not such a bad idea to compare the feedback that you receive now with the feedback that you received from the new employee or the manager, 5 months back. It gives you a chance to probe more, if the ratings have drastically changed. 

9-month follow-up

Now this one is rare, yet important. This is an imperative, especially for all those companies who have their new employees on probation for 1 year. By this time, the new employee sheds the “novice” tag and ideally should be ready to contribute to the organizational goals. This is the time when the manager should be consulted to ask how proactively the new employee is learning and strategically contributing to the business goals. The 3-6-9 process is a great way to collect, measure and analyze critical data points. Having said that, the art of taking feedback also plays a critical role. As part of your New Joinee Induction Program, construct feedback forms and questionnaires that help you get honest and actionable feedback that you can use. Here are some tips that you could effectively use:

1. Use a 5-point rating scale alongside open-ended questions, you are more likely to get more objective answers.
2. Take the intimidation factor out of the process. Assign a buddy who can also double up as a feedback coach. He can be the buddy who can listen to and address employee’s grievances, if any.
3. Encourage feedback by demonstrating transparency. You could create a common discussion group where your employees share suggestions, constructive feedback, and ideas without the fear of retribution. Your new employees will get the message that the organization encourages and appreciates constructive feedback.

Improve the effectiveness of your hiring and onboarding process with the valuable insights that you gather from the 3-6-9 approach. Sujit Kumar is the Associate General Manager – HR at Jindal Stainless Ltd. Jindal Stainless uses Talentpool  to automate time-intensive hiring tasks and streamline their hiring process – right from sourcing a candidate to onboarding them.