The Interview Is the First Day of Onboarding: How Feedback During Hiring Builds the Culture You Want
⏱️ 6–8 min read
By RN Hive — Leadership Development | Hiring | Communication & Feedback Culture
This article is written for nurse leaders, nurse managers, educators, and emerging leaders who want to use the hiring process to model feedback, trust, and the culture they want to build.
Most nurse leaders treat the hiring interview as a one-directional assessment: the candidate is evaluated, a decision is made, and feedback is withheld until after a formal offer or rejection.
It is the standard approach. And for many leaders, it never occurs to them that it is also a missed opportunity.
Here is the reframe: the interview is not the end of the selection process. It is the beginning of the relationship.
How you conduct that interview communicates more about your leadership and your unit’s culture than almost anything you will say once that person is hired.
What you model in the interview room sets the expectation for what life on your team actually looks like.
The RN Hive Shift
The interview is not just where candidates show you who they are.
It is where you show them who you are.
Every question, every pause, every clarification, and every piece of feedback becomes a culture signal.
Strong nurse leaders do not wait until orientation to model communication. They begin during the very first conversation.
Why Feedback During the Interview Process Matters
Transparency and consistent communication are foundational to psychological safety — the shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.
Psychological safety is not built on day one of employment. It is signaled much earlier, in the small moments where a leader chooses honesty over comfort.
Providing real-time feedback during an interview sends a clear and early message:
- We give feedback here, and we do it directly.
- We are transparent about our expectations.
- We believe people can grow, and we will tell you when we see the gap.
For candidates who are the right fit, this approach previews the culture they are walking into. For candidates who are not the right fit, it is still a professional courtesy that leaves the relationship intact.
What Real-Time Feedback in an Interview Actually Looks Like
Real-time feedback does not mean running commentary or disrupting the flow of the interview.
It means that when a candidate consistently misses the behavioral anchor you are listening for, you name it clearly, respectfully, and with enough information for them to respond meaningfully.
For example:
“I want to pause for a second, because I’m asking these questions for a very specific reason. On this unit, accountability means owning mistakes quickly and bringing a solution to the conversation. I’ve heard you describe situations where things went wrong, but I haven’t heard yet how you personally contributed to the resolution. Can you take another shot at that with that lens in mind?”
This approach does three things at once:
- It gives the candidate a fair opportunity.
- It clarifies your expectations.
- It models the direct communication culture you are trying to build.
Delivering the Decision With the Same Transparency
One of the most consistently avoided conversations in nursing leadership is the rejection call.
Many leaders delay it, delegate it, or allow candidates to receive an impersonal automated response. The discomfort is real — no one enjoys delivering disappointing news.
But how a candidate is told they were not selected communicates as much about your culture as the interview itself.
In practical terms, this means:
- Delivering rejections personally when possible, rather than relying only on automated systems.
- Being specific about what was observed and what you were looking for.
- Avoiding vague language like “it was not the right fit.”
- Offering genuine developmental feedback candidates can use going forward.
- Closing the loop in a way that leaves the relationship open.
Healthcare is a small world. Candidates who are not right for your unit today may be exactly right for it in two years.
Honest feedback is not unkind. Done well, it is a model of the communication culture that strong nursing teams need.
The Connection Between Feedback Culture and Nurse Retention
Nurse retention is strongly influenced by the quality of the nurse-manager relationship. And that relationship is shaped, in large part, by how feedback flows.
Units where feedback is withheld until performance reviews — or never given at all — create environments where nurses cannot grow, errors are repeated, and high performers eventually leave because they stop developing.
Units where feedback is specific, timely, and delivered with genuine investment in the recipient’s growth are the ones that retain their best people.
By embedding feedback into your hiring process, you are not just assessing a candidate. You are beginning to model what their experience on your team will feel like.
Candidates who thrive under that model will lean in. Candidates who do not may self-select out — and in the long run, that clarity protects the team.
Best Practice: Build a Feedback-Forward Hiring Process
- Define your behavioral anchors before the interview. Write down the two or three behaviors you are most focused on assessing.
- Know what strong and weak responses sound like. This helps you evaluate consistently instead of reacting to impressions.
- Build in at least one moment of real-time feedback. Use it to redirect, clarify, or affirm what the candidate demonstrated well.
- Debrief with your panel using structured criteria. This prevents impression-based judgments from dominating.
- Make rejection calls personally when possible. Prepare a clear, kind, honest script.
- Track which candidates you rejected and why. Over time, this helps you see whether your questions are assessing what you intend.
The Leader’s Role: Modeling What You Expect
Nurse leaders who struggle to give feedback to their teams often struggle for the same reason in interviews: they learned early in their careers that feedback was either a weapon or a formality — never a gift.
Breaking that pattern requires practice and intentionality.
The leaders who are most admired and most effective are often the ones who give clear, honest, caring feedback. They are the leaders teams describe as “always straight with you” and “the first person I want to know when I make a mistake.”
That kind of leadership does not start when someone joins your team. It starts the first time they meet you.
Sisterly Advice™
The interview is not just where candidates show you who they are.
It is where you show them who you are.
Every question you ask, every piece of feedback you give, and every difficult conversation you choose not to avoid becomes evidence of the culture you are building.
Culture starts long before orientation.
Continue the Conversation
This topic connects directly to the Sisterly Advice™ Podcast conversations on hiring with purpose, feedback culture, leadership communication, and nurse retention.
🎧 Listen to the episode:
Final Thought
The strongest nurse leaders do not wait until orientation to teach culture.
They begin teaching it in the very first conversation.
The interview is not the end of the hiring process. It is the first day of onboarding.
References
Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 425–445.
Cowden, T., Cummings, G., & Profetto-McGrath, J. (2011). Leadership practices and staff nurses’ intent to stay: A systematic review. Journal of Nursing Management, 19(4), 461–477.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
Greenberg, J. (1990). Organizational justice: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Journal of Management, 16(2), 399–432.
Laschinger, H. K. S., Finegan, J., & Wilk, P. (2009). Context matters: The impact of unit leadership and empowerment on nurses’ organizational commitment. Journal of Nursing Administration, 39(5), 228–235.
