Whether listening to lost employees, lost sales analysis, lost job candidates or lost customers it is more of an art then a science and one of the most challenging forms of survey research.
Current U.S. Business Environment: The subject itself is an indication of the current business environment. Talent Wars are upon us since the supply demand balance has shifted once again in favor of the employee. Echo is predicting an even crazier recruiting environment then in the late 1990’s before the bubble burst. But this war is predicted to go on for a very long time.
Talent Supply Shortage: Today in the U.S. for every two people leaving the workforce only one is entering. And the supply of the coveted 25 to 35 year old demographic will shrink 15% over the next 15 years according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the IT, engineering, accounting and other specialized occupational clusters in health care and marketing research, the supply side is sparse.
Online Surveys Suck: How does one get a handle on why employment candidates decline an offer? Although it is easy for employers to send out web surveys it is not that easy for candidates to fill them out because most online surveys suck. Even the short surveys are a pain and most good surveys usually ask someone to type answer(s) to open-ended questions, which produce the best intelligence, but only about 3 in 10 people can touch type. With all that said you might get a 5% to 25% response online.
The question is the resulting sample representative of the population you are interested in and are the responses valid. The # 1 reason given in lost whatever research is money or price in the case of lost sales. Our follow-up lost research experiences for dozens of clients indicates that money is rarely the real reason. Maybe 30% of the times max but it is the easiest answer to give.
Sit Back and Tell Me: It is easier to track the candidate down on their cell phone and ask for 3 to 5 minutes of their time. Most (70%) of the people would rather kick back, take five and dialog with you. Then comes the hard part how do you get them to tell you what they really think. Most people won’t tell someone they have bad breath. Furthermore what is in it for the candidate to take the time to answer? They already wrote your company off.
Incentive to Share: Even if you have made it easy for the target to share via telephone or an easy to do online survey what’s the incentive for them to be open and honest? Well, money talks and it is amazing what a few strokes to the ego can do too. Money gets their attention for few seconds and says you really care about their opinions. The real question is besides money if you could have changed one thing about our offer or proposal what would that have been? Then probe for a second reason or change idea. Finally, ask relative to money or price how far were we off. Don’t be surprised if the overall answer from your survey is less then 15%.
Original Post by Lou Musante via Lee Hecht Harrison