Entry Interview Surveys: Start the Employee Experience the Right Way
When a new employee joins your organization, the first weeks matter.
They form impressions about leadership, workplace culture, expectations, and whether they made the right decision to join your organization. Yet many organizations focus heavily on exit interviews, while missing the opportunity to learn from employees at the beginning of their journey.
An Entry Interview Survey allows organizations to capture early feedback from new hires about their hiring experience, onboarding process, and initial impressions. Done well, it can reveal valuable insights that help improve recruitment, onboarding, and employee engagement.
What Is an Entry Interview Survey?
An Entry Interview Survey is a short questionnaire sent to new employees shortly after they begin their role, typically within the first 30 to 90 days.
Its goal is to understand:
- Why the employee chose to join your organization
- Whether the hiring and onboarding experience met expectations
- How well the role and responsibilities were explained
- What early challenges or support needs exist
- How new hires perceive your culture and communication
Unlike exit interviews, entry interviews provide real-time insights that can still influence employee success and retention.
Why Entry Interviews Matter
Organizations often invest significant resources in recruitment but gather little structured feedback from new hires about that experience.
Entry interviews help organizations:
Improve the recruitment process
New employees can highlight what worked well, or what caused confusion, during the hiring process.
Strengthen onboarding programs
Early feedback helps identify whether onboarding materials, training, and internal processes are effective.
Detect early disengagement
Employees who struggle in their first months are more likely to leave within the first year. Entry interviews allow organizations to identify concerns early.
Validate employer brand messaging
Entry interviews help determine whether the organization employees joined matches what was communicated during recruitment.
Build a culture of listening
When employees see their feedback is welcomed from day one, it sets the tone for open communication.
Best Practices for Entry Interview Surveys
To get meaningful insights, entry interview surveys should follow a few key principles.
Keep the survey concise
New employees are busy learning their role. A survey of 10–15 questions is usually sufficient.
Ask a mix of quantitative and open-ended questions
Rating questions help track trends, while open-ended questions reveal deeper insights.
Send the survey at the right time
Common timing options include:
- 30 days after start date
- 60 days after start date
- 90 days after start date
Some organizations use multiple checkpoints to track the onboarding experience over time.
Ensure confidentiality
Employees must feel safe providing honest feedback, especially when evaluating their manager or onboarding process.
Share insights with managers and HR
Entry interview feedback should inform improvements in:
- recruitment messaging
- onboarding processes
- team integration practices
- training programs
Using SimpleSurvey to Conduct Entry Interview Surveys
SimpleSurvey makes it easy to collect structured feedback from new employees while maintaining privacy and data security.
Organizations use SimpleSurvey to:
- Create professional employee feedback surveys
- Automate invitations based on start dates
- Analyze onboarding trends across departments
- Protect employee anonymity
- Ensure Canadian data residency and privacy compliance
Trusted and widely used by public agencies, healthcare organizations, consulting firms, professional associations, and various other industry sectors across Canada, SimpleSurvey delivers secure and versatile solutions you can rely on.
Start with Our Entry Interview Survey Template
To help organizations get started quickly, we’ve created a ready-to-use Entry Interview Survey Template.
It includes professionally designed questions that help you evaluate:
- recruitment and hiring experience
- onboarding quality
- clarity of job expectations
- team integration
- early employee engagement
You can customize the template to match your organization’s needs.
Start a free trial and access the Entry Interview Survey template or learn more about how SimpleSurvey helps organizations manage employee surveys and feedback programs.