Interviews with diverse members of the TA team, including the executives, recruitment professionals, and onboarding coordinators, were selected as a research method to gather in-depth qualitative information aiding in finalizing the organizational diagnosis. Interviews with Steve Perry and Randy Jackson, the executive leaders, were approved to generate an insight into the organization’s key business goals influenced by vacancies as viewed by its central strategic decision-makers. In another instance, combined with a documentation review, an interview with the TA director supports the exploration of the organization’s background check policies pertaining to new hires. In a similar manner, interviews can enable the researchers to comprehend the TA team’s perspectives on the onboarding process, possible improvement areas, and the process’s evolution. Given the aforementioned questions’ nature, emphasizing exploring rather than measuring, and the presence of specific professionals anticipated to provide the most detailed answers, addressing these objectives by resorting only to quantitative research would produce limited insights. For that reason, the research team agreed to conduct interviews.
The second method the project utilizes, observation, was approved by the team during the planning stage. Regarding the purpose, observation was considered an opportunity to generate unbiased data concerning the peculiarities of the current onboarding process in the studied organization. As a qualitative method providing researchers with direct access to the phenomenon of interest, observation supplements the results of quantitative research, including the use of surveys. This method’s inclusion promotes the research team’s ability to critically evaluate survey and interview results, which represent the viewpoints of executive directors, the hiring team, and other professional groups not immune to biases. Moreover, evidence collected via observations can facilitate the production of an updated process flow diagram, thus supporting the accuracy of the final managerial and organizational diagnosis. Therefore, the decision to include observations stems from the research team’s motivation to accomplish an adequate and objective understanding of the organization’s physical setting and actual interprofessional interactions taking place. This can reduce the risks of misconceptions resulting from relying solely on information reported by process participants.