Cut 90-Day Turnover 60% with Work-Demo Interview Design

In a rapid-expansion warehouse environment, high early turnover and inconsistent quality among new hires were undermining productivity—90-day turnover sat at 45%, and supervisors were fielding recurring quality errors from employees who couldn't reliably follow instructions under real working conditions. Traditional interviews weren't surfacing whether candidates could actually perform the job accurately, so I identified an opportunity to redesign the hiring process around a practical, skills-based assessment.

I pitched the concept of a work-demo interview to the warehouse operations manager and my own leadership, then designed the assessment myself using a Lego-based simulation that mirrored the precision and instruction-following required on the floor. I set the specific time and accuracy thresholds candidates needed to meet, and trained my recruiter to score candidates consistently against those benchmarks—ensuring the process was objective, repeatable, and scalable beyond just my own judgment.

The results were immediate and measurable: within three months of rollout, 90-day turnover dropped from 45% to 18%, and supervisors reported fewer quality errors since new hires had already demonstrated they could follow instructions accurately in a cold, unfamiliar test scenario. The improved screening also increased hiring speed, which was critical given the company's rapid growth phase. The success of the pilot led to the work-demo interview being extended to the Vancouver site as well. While I moved on from the role after eight months and can't speak to longer-term outcomes at that location, the initial impact validated the model as a repeatable, scalable hiring solution.