Alex Moore
Chief People Officer
Asset Living
Episode 186
Transform Your Workforce: Master Expectation Setting from Hire to Retire
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMay 16, 2025 · 16:16
Thesis
“A holistic and iterative approach to HR, focusing on meticulous expectation setting from recruiting through performance management, is crucial for fostering employee engagement, retention, and overall organizational success.”
Show notes
Alex Moore noticed something early in her recruiting career that most organizations take years to diagnose: when employees leave within their first year, it's rarely because the job was bad. It's because the job wasn't the one they were sold in the interview.
Now Chief People Officer at Asset Living, Alex has built her entire people strategy around a single connective thread — alignment between what you say during recruiting and what employees actually experience. That means using work samples during the interview process rather than hypothetical questions (research places them in the top three predictors of job performance), setting explicit expectations during onboarding about exactly how and when feedback will happen, and designing performance reviews that deliver tiered, position-specific standards in a conversational format that feels developmental rather than judgmental. The insight isn't complicated. Employees who know what to expect, and then experience exactly that, stay longer and perform better. The organizations that struggle are usually the ones where what's promised in the interview bears little resemblance to what happens after week one.
Alex's approach to performance management is particularly worth hearing. When she inherited a system where feedback standards varied significantly by manager and team, she rebuilt it around a simple principle: every employee should know exactly how they're doing, exactly when they'll be evaluated, and exactly what growth looks like from where they stand. Her candid advice for HR professionals — remain genuinely open to new solutions, including moving away from preferred technologies when the data shows they're not working — reflects the iterative mindset that keeps people programs from calcifying.
- Work sample testing as a hiring signal — why they're in the top three predictors of job performance and how they expand the candidate pool
- Setting expectations before day one — the specific things candidates should know about feedback, evaluation, and norms before they accept an offer
- Onboarding as expectation confirmation — designing the first 30/60/90 days to deliver exactly what was promised in the hiring process
- Rebuilding performance reviews from scratch — tiered, position-specific standards in a conversational format that drives development rather than anxiety
- The iterative HR mindset — assessing shortfalls regularly and being willing to change course, even when it means abandoning a preferred platform
- Recruiting as the first retention touchpoint — why the engagement problem almost always has its roots in how candidates were recruited
Previ is a private pricing network, free for companies to launch and maintain, that saves employees $2,200/year on essentials like cell phone and auto insurance. Learn more here.
What you'll take away
- 1Aligning expectations from the recruiting process through onboarding and performance reviews is critical for employee engagement and retention.
- 2Utilize work sample testing during interviews to broaden candidate pools and predict job performance more effectively.
- 3Partner with internal business leaders who have L&D capabilities to design effective onboarding and integration programs.
- 4Design performance review processes with specific, tiered expectations for each position, layered with company-wide standards, and delivered in a conversational format.
- 5Maintain an iterative approach to HR programs, constantly assessing shortfalls and being open to new solutions, even if it means moving away from preferred technologies.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Alex implicitly challenges the idea of a one-size-fits-all recruiting strategy or reliance on a single, favorite technology platform, advocating for a nuanced, multi-ATS approach based on business unit needs.
- •Challenges the notion that a consulting firm should *only* hire career consultants, successfully broadening the talent pool by reassessing candidate personas and focusing on transferable skills.
In Alex's words
“I wanted to make sure that what we were selling them on, if you will, about the company that we obviously believed was true, I really wanted it to be what they experienced, that they could really find a great career with us.”
Highlights the importance of aligning recruitment messaging with actual employee experience.
“Work samples in this study are in the top 3 of the best predictors of job performance. And that's why we anchored to the strategy to open up our candidate pool.”
Emphasizes a data-backed approach to improve hiring and broaden talent sources.
“Everyone joining knew exactly what to expect as it relates to understanding how they're doing, getting that sort of evaluation feedback, when it happens, how it happens from day one.”
Stresses the importance of early and clear communication about performance expectations.
“We all really do need to be told evaluation feedback along the way. And because there wasn't really a standard of how this was happening at our company, it just wasn't happening in a way that really helped people feel secure and really set up for success or long-term career growth at our company.”
Articulates the fundamental human need for feedback and its impact on employee security and growth.
“A big thing for me is always be open to iteration, and I would say that was really helped us overcome any sort of short-term failure or short-term opportunities for improvement that we identified when we rolled this programming out.”
Highlights the value of continuous improvement and adaptability in HR initiatives.
“I've learned to keep an open mind in problem solving and not anchoring to what I've seen work in the past. And I really found that this made all the difference in coming up with the best possible recruitment solution for my company.”
Emphasizes the importance of flexibility and innovation in HR strategy, especially when faced with new challenges.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Limited candidate pools due to traditional recruiting strategies that prioritize extensive prior experience (solved by reassessing personas and using work samples).
- •Disengagement and lack of retention when expectations set during recruiting don't match the actual employee experience.
- •Ineffective onboarding and integration programs that lack depth and clarity on performance expectations, leading to new hire struggles.
- •Lack of standardization and clarity in performance review processes, leading to employees feeling insecure about their performance and career growth.
- •Inefficient recruiting operations when a single ATS is forced to accommodate diverse and complex recruiting strategies across different business units.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
built by people
You got into recruiting through your college athletics experience
How to Get Out There in the Recruitment Process
Setting clear expectations during the interview process significantly impacts employee engagement and retention
Setting clear expectations during the Hiring Process
Ononing integration program helps align new hires with organizational expectations
How To Design an Onboarding Integration Program
Real estate firm overhauled its performance review process to align with employee expectations
How One Company overhauled its Performance Review Process
Alex had to adapt his recruiting strategies due to an unforeseen challenge
The Importance of Adapting Your Recruitment Strategy
Alex: Never stop pursuing learning and growth. Dave: Alex, what parting advice would you share
Alex on Built by People
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
Expand transcript (0 words)
Transcript is not available yet.