Jason Moreau
CEO | Survale
In this interview, we spoke with Jason Moreau, CEO of Survale, a platform focused on real-time feedback for candidates and employees, who shares how feedback is transforming hiring, why quality of hire matters, and the business impact of prioritizing candidate experience.
With decades of experience in HR tech, Jason shares his insights on quality of hire, the power of feedback, and why candidate experience remains a critical but overlooked priority in many organizations.
You’ve built Survale around real-time feedback. What’s one insight from candidate or employee feedback that completely changed the way you think about hiring?
I like that question. It made me sit back and really think. One of the things I always thought was that employers had full control – you know, we held the job and we held the stick. But what we’re starting to see is a shift in mindset, where candidates actually have control too.
Specifically, I’m talking about top talent. Through the surveys, we’re consistently seeing that top talent is highly selective. They’re judging you – your hiring process, your communication style, how timely you are, whether you’re transparent.
A real-world example is one of our tech clients. They were surveying at different touchpoints, including after declined offers. Candidates made it all the way through interviews, received offers, but declined. And what they discovered was that it wasn’t primarily because of compensation. It was because the interviews gave the impression of being disorganized.
Interviewers weren’t prepared. Simply by understanding that feedback, they went back, adjusted, retrained their interviewers to come prepared, be clear, and avoid repetitive questions. As a result, their offer acceptance rate jumped significantly within 90 days.
That’s one insight I like to look at. When I read your question, I thought, yeah – that’s exactly what we’ve see.
How do you define and measure quality of hire in a way that actually impacts business outcomes?
Our clients use Survale‘s technology to measure quality of hire, and that helps them impact business outcomes. They survey managers after placing a new hire in a department – not necessarily for every hire, but maybe one survey per month to a manager.
They’ll ask questions around performance: is the new hire meeting or exceeding expectations? They’ll check retention: is the new hire still here? Are they culturally fitting in? You just highlighted how important that is. If they fit culturally, the impact is tenfold. If they don’t, there’s likely turnover.
We also encourage clients to ask whether the new hire is reaching productivity expectations at 30 or 90 days – are they ramping up in a timely manner? And then there’s a simple question I like: how likely would you rehire this person? That one question alone tells you a lot. We frame it like an NPS score: how likely would you rehire this person now that they’ve been in your department for 90 or 180 days?
Those are the four or five core questions we encourage clients to use when measuring quality of hire from the manager’s point of view. Of course, you can factor in more – like surveying new hires themselves: do they feel valued, supported, are they ramping up? There are lots of ways to define quality of hire, but those core questions are a solid starting point.
What’s one low-budget tactic any HR team can use to quickly improve candidate or employee experience?
This might be a little self-serving, but honestly – implementing some real-time feedback into your hiring process. And by that, I mean surveying.
You can be very sophisticated with surveying, or you can start at what we call “level one.” A level one survey with Survale is a professional version that’s not directly integrated into your ATS. You can come in, use pre-canned, pre-configured surveys with branding and questions already embedded. You simply take the survey link and manually send it out.
That’s a low-cost, easy way to start gathering feedback. Then you can get more sophisticated by integrating with your ATS so it’s automated and continuous. Integration also brings more insights, like filtering by department, manager, recruiter – any operational field in your ATS.
But even without that, low-budget options are better than no surveying at all. It gives you a high-level glimpse that tells you, hey, you might have an issue over here. Then you can dig into qualitative feedback to understand more.
That would be the first step – your foundation.
You’ve been in HR tech for years. What’s one thing the industry still gets wrong about hiring or feedback?
One thing I still see is managers leaning too much on intuition or gut feeling. Don’t get me wrong – gut feeling plays a role. But many are leaning on it too heavily after interviews, favoring the wrong candidate.
Without structured evaluation processes, you create bias. You miss opportunities. Diverse candidates with non-traditional backgrounds get overlooked because they don’t fit the mold, even though they could be highly valuable.
It also makes companies inefficient. You can’t grow at scale without structure. You just can’t. That’s the biggest thing I see – companies still relying on gut feeling and making decisions off the cuff.
Why do you think candidate experience is still undervalued in many organizations, and what’s the cost of ignoring it?
I think it’s undervalued because of short-term thinking. Some talent acquisition teams are focused on ramping up fast. They don’t have time to implement proper tools – they’re just told, “Go.”
So they prioritize speed and efficiency over crafting thoughtful, meaningful experiences. Candidate experience falls through the cracks. People know it’s important, but it doesn’t get prioritized or incentivized at the leadership level.
When it is prioritized by executive leadership, the impact is significant. But often, it’s seen as a soft metric. There’s a misconception about ROI. From a CFO’s perspective, it’s hard to link business impact to candidate experience, so it gets deprioritized.
But I think ROI shows up when you look at your talent pipeline. If poor candidates are coming in, or turnover is high, that reflects your brand and your experiences.
You end up having to pay an extra 10-20% salary to attract top talent – the same candidate who would have accepted an offer across the street from a company with a stronger brand and culture. That’s where ROI shows up.
If you’re asking, “Why do we have to pay more to get this person?” – that tells you a lot. It’s not just about brand; it’s everything that builds the brand, including experience.
As a long-time CEO in the HR tech space, what’s one leadership lesson that’s shaped how you build teams and drive company culture?
I love that question. I think you touched on it earlier – building psychological safety is foundational to a high-performing team.
It’s about treating people as peers, creating a safe space to speak up, whether it’s a wild idea, a concern, or a question. It’s meaningful. It’s impactful. Sometimes those wild ideas, if you keep navigating and pivoting, lead to opportunities.
If you shut that out, you miss opportunities, which could lead to failure down the line. I like open discussions. It really is true: there’s no dumb question. Let’s talk. Let’s see what comes out of it. Maybe nothing – or maybe something great.
Listening and inclusivity matter.
Jason‘s perspective highlights the critical role of feedback, culture, and leadership in building stronger hiring practices and better workplaces. His insights are a powerful reminder that small improvements in process and transparency can have a big impact on both candidates and employees.
Stay tuned for more conversations with inspiring leaders in the HR Connect series. Interested in sharing your story? Contact us at info@fip.agency to be featured.
Dilara Cossette
Founder
Dilara Cossette is the founder of FIP, a boutique demand generation agency helping HR tech companies accelerate growth. With deep experience in B2B, she partners with HR tech companies to build strategies that drive demand, grow pipeline, and strengthen brand presence. Passionate about workplace culture, Dilara spotlights insights from HR tech innovators through the HR Connect interview series.
