Sample report, public edition. Meridian Health Group is a made-up client. The format, the depth and the honesty are exactly what lands on your desk. Two things are withheld here and shown to clients at scoping: how the audit is built, and the names of the people interviewed. About the Talent Audit →
FieldworkQuestionnaires and interviews conducted June 2026
Version1.0 · 8 July 2026
ClassificationPublic edition. The client edition is prepared for the exclusive use of the client's leadership.
This report was prepared solely for Meridian Health Group on the basis of questionnaires completed by, and interviews conducted with, the four respondents named in section 03, together with hiring outcome figures provided by the business. Findings reflect the process as observed at the time of fieldwork and describe the hiring system, not the performance of any individual. The report is not for distribution beyond Meridian's leadership without Calder Talent's written agreement, and no third party may rely on it.
01 · The Shape of Your Hiring
Two views of the same system
Eight dimensions, two shapes. The dashed shape is how hiring looks from where your leadership sits. The solid shape is the view assembled from everyone we spoke to. Almost every business shows some distance between the two; that is normal, and it is fixable. What matters is where the distance sits, and what it costs while it stays.
How hiring looks from where leadership sits
The view across every voice
The widest gap between the two
Where the shapes sit close together, your business agrees with itself. Where they separate, decisions are being made on different information. The clay mark is the widest gap, and in our experience it is the most useful place to start the conversation.
Figure 1. Believed versus actual across the eight dimensions. Source: Calder Talent audit questionnaires and interviews, Meridian Health Group, June 2026.
02 · Executive Summary
Where you stand, and where to start
The whole audit in a few minutes' read, for anyone who needs the full picture without the full report. Three numbers carry it, and each is worth being honest about. The findings are numbered F1 to F4, and every action in the ninety-day plan and every engagement proposed at the end traces back to at least one of them.
5 of 8
dimensions where leadership reads hiring in better shape than the people running it
What it really means: decisions and budgets are being priced off the brighter picture.
1.4 pts
the widest gap, on Process Consistency, measured on the five-point scale
What it really means: the distance between "this works" and "this needs structured work".
11 days
of silence your newest hire sat through after their final interview
What it really means: they nearly took the other offer, and nothing in the process would have noticed.
Meridian hires with more care than its results suggest. The effort inside this business is real, and in places the intent is genuinely strong. What the audit found is a gap in information rather than a gap in capability: on five of the eight dimensions, leadership sees hiring in better shape than the people closest to the work do. There is nothing unusual about that, and nothing permanent either. The ninety-day plan starts with the reporting line, because once leadership and the operators share the same picture, every other fix becomes easier to choose and cheaper to run.
Key Findings
F1On five of eight dimensions, leadership sees hiring in better shape than the people who run it do. The first fix is the reporting line that closes that gap, not anyone's capability.
F2Candidate experience scores highly with everyone except the one person who recently lived it. Hold the strong internal score gently: it is measuring intent, and the candidate was measuring the experience.
F3The hiring process is clearer on paper than in practice, so the manager running a search currently shapes its quality more than the process does.
F4Much of what works is carried personally by two people. That care is an asset worth keeping; the risk is that nothing holds it up when they are away.
03 · About This Audit
A structured view of your talent acquisition function
This scorecard documents the findings of a structured audit across eight dimensions of your hiring function. Findings are drawn from responses provided by leadership, hiring managers, and your people and talent team, alongside perspectives from recent hires.
Who Was Interviewed
Leadership
CEO
Hiring Manager
Head of Clinical Operations
TA / HR Lead
People & Talent Lead
Recent Hire
Care Coordinator, hired April 2026
How This Audit Was Conducted
The Method: shown to clients at scoping
How the audit is built is not in the public edition: the question set, the scoring anchors, and the way each voice and each dimension is weighted. The shape is this. Every person who touches hiring answers a structured questionnaire independently, then sits for an hour of conversation built from what the questionnaire found. The report measures the distance between what each seat believes about hiring and what the process actually does.
The Limits, Stated Plainly
A small number of voices, at one point in time. One recent hire is a single datapoint of lived experience, which is why their scores are flagged against the internal view rather than averaged into silence. Perceptions are validated against your hard outcome figures in section 11.
This is deliberately not a benchmarking exercise: we assess you against how your business needs to hire, not an industry average that would hide your specific gap. Where an external benchmark matters to a decision, we source it for your context.
How to Read This Report
Each dimension is shown as a position on a five-step scale, from struggling on the left to strong on the right. Every mark on a scale is where one group of your people placed it; the coloured line is the consolidated read. Where the marks sit apart, people in different seats are experiencing different processes, and that distance is usually where the expensive surprises live. Each dimension lands in one of three tiers.
Solid
Functioning well. Protect and build.
Develop
Inconsistent. Structured improvement needed.
Critical
Broken. Immediate intervention required.
04 · Overall Health
Exposed
Where your hiring system sits today
Meridian's leadership describes a clear, well-communicated hiring process. The people who run it day to day, and the person who most recently came through it, describe something quite different. It is worth saying plainly that this is an information problem, not a capability problem: the care inside this business is real, and nobody we spoke to is doing their part badly. What is missing is the connection between the people doing the work and the people funding it. Once leadership sees what the hiring manager and the TA lead see, the fixes in this report become straightforward choices rather than guesses.
Fragile
Structural gaps producing poor outcomes now.
Exposed
Foundations exist but leak under load.
Functional
Works today. Will strain as you grow.
Strong
A hiring system you can build on.
05 · The Gap, Measured
How far apart the two views sit, dimension by dimension
Each bar is the distance between leadership's read and the consolidated read, on the five-point scale. Anything past one full point means the two views are a whole band apart: decisions made at the top are working from a materially different picture than the one on the ground. Five of your eight dimensions cross that line.
one full band
Process Consistency
1.4
Role Clarity
1.2
Candidate Experience
1.2
Onboarding Integration
1.2
Accountability
1.1
HM Capability
0.8
Data & Measurement
0.7
Tools & Technology
0.3
Gap = leadership's read minus the consolidated read, on the five-point scale. Clay bars sit a full band or more apart.
Figure 2. Perception gap by dimension. Source: Calder Talent audit scoring, June 2026.
An Honest Read of These Numbers
A gap of 1.4 on a five-point scale is not a rounding difference. It is the distance between "this works" and "this needs structured work". Budgets, tooling decisions and headcount plans are approved against the first picture; searches are run inside the second. The three dimensions at 1.2 tell the same story from different seats: the brief, the candidate's experience and the first week each look fine from the top and frayed from close up. And the 0.3 on Tools & Technology deserves as much attention as the 1.4, because it means your business already agrees about its tools. The fix there is habits, not spend.
06 · What We Heard
The themes that ran through every interview
Before the scores, the conversations. These are the threads that came up across respondents, unprompted, in different words. The scores quantify them; the themes are what they feel like from inside the business.
01
Two versions of the same company
Every interview split along the same line. Leadership described a structured, well-communicated hiring process; the people who run it described improvisation held together by individual effort. Neither side is wrong about what they can see. They are describing different altitudes of the same system, and nothing currently connects the two views.
02
Silence at the moments that matter
The process goes quiet exactly when the stakes peak: after final interviews, between offer and day one, and in the first week. Your most recent hire went eleven days without contact after their final interview and nearly took a competing offer. Their laptop arrived on day four. None of this is carelessness; each of those moments simply has no owner yet.
03
Effort is personal, not systemic
Where hiring works at Meridian, it works because a named person pushes it over the line: the TA lead assembling the board pack by hand, the hiring manager calling final-stage candidates himself. Nothing is carried by the system, which means quality depends on who is in the room and drops the week they are on leave.
04
The outcome has no owner yet
Every respondent could name who runs interviews. Nobody could name who owns the result. Hires are judged good or bad in hindsight, decline reasons live in memory rather than anywhere shared, and there is no loop that turns one search's lessons into the next search's process. This is less a gap in effort than a role nobody has been given.
07 · In Their Words
What your people actually said
Quoted word for word from the audit interviews, and attributed to the seat rather than the person. None of these voices is wrong; each is describing the process from a different distance. Read them together, because the space between them is what this report is about.
The Same Question, Two Seats
“We have a process everyone follows. It’s one of the things we’ve got right.”
Leadership · on process consistency
“If you asked three of our managers to describe how we hire, you’d get three answers, and two of them would be wrong.”
TA / HR Lead · same question
And From the People Living the Outcomes
“I almost took the other offer because I went eleven days without hearing anything after the final interview.”
Recent Hire
“I find out the brief has changed when the candidates stop matching it.”
Hiring Manager
“I build the board pack by hand the night before. If I’m on leave, there is no pack.”
TA / HR Lead · on hiring data
“Nobody knew I was starting. My laptop arrived on day four.”
Recent Hire · on the first week
08 · The Eight Dimensions
L Leadership · HM Hiring Manager · TA TA / HR Lead · RH Recent Hire
The map showed the shape; these scales show the detail. Each row is one dimension, each small mark is where one group of your people placed it, and the coloured line is the consolidated read. Rows where the marks sit close together are dimensions your business agrees on. Rows where they spread are worth a conversation, because people in different seats are seeing genuinely different things, and that difference usually has a cost attached.
Role Clarity
Leadership and your TA/HR lead are not describing the same process.
L
HM
TA
RH
3.3 / 5
Develop
Process Consistency
The widest gap in the audit: 1.4 points between leadership and the consolidated read.
L
HM
TA
RH
3.0 / 5
Develop
Hiring Manager Capability
Leadership sees this in better shape than your TA/HR lead does.
L
HM
TA
RH
3.2 / 5
Develop
Accountability
Leadership and your TA/HR lead are not describing the same process.
L
HM
TA
RH
2.9 / 5
Develop
Tools & Technology
The closest agreement in the audit. The stack is adequate; the habits around it are not.
L
HM
TA
RH
3.2 / 5
Develop
Candidate Experience
Every internal voice scored this 5.0. The one recent candidate scored it 2.4.
L
HM
TA
RH
3.8 / 5
Solid
Data & Measurement
Leadership sees this in better shape than your TA/HR lead does.
L
HM
TA
RH
3.1 / 5
Develop
Onboarding Integration
Leadership and your recent hire are not describing the same process.
L
HM
TA
RH
2.8 / 5
Develop
Figure 3. Respondent positions and consolidated reads, all eight dimensions. Source: Calder Talent audit scoring, June 2026.
09 · Deep Dives
The two findings that carry the report
One is the widest gap in the audit; the other is the finding the averages tried to bury. Each comes with what it is costing you and the first move to make.
01Process ConsistencyDevelop
What the Data Says
The widest leadership-to-operator split in the audit. The CEO believes there is "a process everyone follows." The TA lead said flatly "if you asked three of our managers to describe how we hire, you'd get three answers, and two of them would be wrong."
The process exists as a document leadership can point to, and as well-intentioned improvisation everywhere it is actually executed.
What This Is Costing You
Candidate quality is being set by which manager runs the search, not by your process. That variance is invisible in aggregate and expensive in the specific: it is why your strong-team hires and your problem hires come from the same pipeline.
Your First Move
Ask three hiring managers to write down, independently, the steps a candidate goes through from application to offer. Compare the three lists in one meeting with the TA lead in the room. The differences are your real process map, and the fix starts with whichever step has three versions.
02Candidate ExperienceSolid
What the Data Says
This is the finding the average tried to bury. All three internal respondents rated candidate experience at the very top of the scale. The recent hire, the one person in the room who was recently a candidate, placed it near the bottom and said "I almost took the other offer because I went eleven days without hearing anything after the final interview."
The dimension reads Solid because the people scoring it see the process from the inside, where the intent is genuinely good. The one person who saw it from the outside experienced the spaces between the touchpoints. Neither view is dishonest; only one of them is what candidates take away.
What This Is Costing You
Strong candidates are being lost at the offer-decision stage and recorded as "they had another offer." While the internal picture stays this positive, those losses read as bad luck rather than as something fixable. Every declined offer at a 40-day time-to-fill resets the clock on a role you needed filled six weeks ago.
Your First Move
Before the next search closes, have the TA lead send a three-question feedback note to every candidate who reached final interview in the last six months, hired or not. The hiring manager reads the replies aloud at the next leadership meeting. Done looks like leadership hearing the eleven-day silence described by the people who lived it.
10 · Pattern Findings
What the data reveals beyond individual scores
Patterns emerge when multiple dimensions interact in ways that create systemic risk. These are not individual weaknesses: they are compounding failures that amplify each other.
Ground Truth Is Not Reaching the Top
The operators' view is not reaching the top, so leadership is acting on a more optimistic picture than the people running hiring.
This is the headline. On three separate dimensions, Role Clarity, Process Consistency, and Accountability, the CEO placed hiring in far better shape than both the hiring manager and the TA lead did. The evidence is consistent across the interviews: there is no mechanism carrying ground truth from the people running hiring back up to the person funding it. This is the pattern to fix first because it is upstream of every other finding.
The Outside View Disagrees
The process the business believes it runs is not the process candidates actually experience.
Candidate Experience reads Solid on the strength of three internal respondents at the top of the scale, while the only recent candidate placed it near the bottom. Hold this score lightly rather than protecting it as a strength. It is the finding most worth double-checking, precisely because it is the most reassuring one in the report.
11 · Reality Check
What the hard numbers say
The findings above are perceptions. These are outcomes. Where a finding reads well but an outcome does not, the finding is the thing to question.
80%
Offer acceptance rate
One in five people you chose said no. At sixty hires a year, that is roughly a dozen searches restarting at the final step.
40days
Avg time to fill
No internal target exists to compare this against. The honest reading is that nobody yet knows whether this is good.
18%
6-month attrition
About one in six hires is gone inside six months. At your volume, that is ten restarts a year.
60roles
Hires in last 12 months
One start every six days. Whatever this process does well or badly, it does it sixty times a year.
Figure 4. Hiring outcome metrics, trailing twelve months. Source: reported by Meridian Health Group, June 2026.
ConcernReporting exists as effort, not as a system
Core hiring metrics can only be partially reported, assembled by hand before board meetings. The effort keeps everyone informed, but it arrives late and rests on one person. Measurement matters here because it is the precondition for proving any fix in this report actually worked.
12 · What This Costs You
The cost of leaving it as it is
Every figure below is built from your own numbers and the assumption printed beside it. Change an assumption and the total moves; the direction does not. We have kept every assumption at the conservative end, and we have left out more than we counted.
Driver, from your findings
Assumptions, stated
Annual cost
Declined offers F2
At 80% acceptance across roughly 75 offers a year, about 15 chosen candidates say no, and each search restarts at the final step.
Each restart costs $8,000 to $15,000: the search rework plus another 40 days of vacancy at a conservative value of the unfilled role.
$120k to $225k
Early attrition F2 · F3
At 18% six-month attrition on 60 hires, about 11 people a year are gone before they have finished landing.
Each early leaver costs 40% to 75% of an $85,000 median salary: rehire, lost ramp time, and team disruption. The published research range runs higher; we have used the floor.
$375k to $700k
The gap, priced conservatively
Before anything we chose not to model.
$0.5m to $0.9m a year
Figure 5. Annualised cost of current-state hiring outcomes. Sources: volumes and rates as reported by Meridian (Figure 4); cost assumptions as stated per line.
What We Deliberately Did Not Model
The cost of briefs drifting mid-search, of interview quality varying by manager, of leadership hours spent on hiring escalations, and of the roles filled slowly enough that the work went undone. Each is real and each is in your findings; none is estimable honestly from four interviews, so none is in the number. Read the total as a floor. And for scale: the ninety-day plan that starts closing it costs your team three meetings and thirty minutes a fortnight.
13 · The 90-Day Plan
Ninety days of work, in the order it should happen
This is a work plan rather than a list of recommendations, and it is a roadmap you can run without us. Every action has an owner inside your business and a definition of done you can check. It runs in sequence, because each phase makes the next one easier, and it has three checkpoints where you will know whether it is working.
Day 0
Day 30 · checkpoint
Day 60 · checkpoint
Day 90 · review
See clearly
Three actions. Builds the shared picture leadership has been missing.
Fix the structure
Three actions. Locks the brief, closes the silence, trains the craft.
Make it stick
Three actions. Turns the fixes into habits that survive a busy month.
Days 0-30See clearly
Action
Owner
What done looks like
Stand up the monthly hiring one-pager to leadership: open roles, time in stage, decline reasons, and 30-day new-hire checks, on one page. F1
The TA lead
First pack tabled at the August leadership meeting.
Send a three-question feedback note to every candidate who reached final interview in the last six months, hired or not. F2
The TA lead
Replies read aloud, unedited, at the same meeting.
Have three hiring managers independently write down the steps a candidate goes through from application to offer, then compare the lists in one sitting. F3
The hiring manager
One agreed process map, with every step that had three versions flagged on it.
By Day 30 You Should See
Leadership and the operators looking at the same one-page picture, for the first time.
The real decline reasons on the table, in candidates' own words.
One process map everyone has signed, with its weak steps named.
Days 31-60Fix the structure
Action
Owner
What done looks like
Lock the role brief at approval: a signed brief standard that cannot move once sourcing starts, with any change requiring re-approval. F3
The hiring manager, with the TA lead
The next two searches run end to end on locked briefs.
Close the silence: a candidate communication standard with a maximum of five business days between touchpoints, from final interview through to day one. F2
The TA lead
Every active candidate has a dated next-contact entry against their name.
Run the first interviewer training session for the managers with searches this quarter: briefing, structured interviewing, decision hygiene. F3
The hiring manager
Every active interviewer has been through session one.
By Day 60 You Should See
The next two searches running on briefs that cannot drift.
No candidate waiting more than five business days to hear from you.
Every active interviewer through structured training once.
Days 61-90Make it stick
Action
Owner
What done looks like
Run a post-hire retrospective on every search that closes: what the brief said, who was hired, what the decline reasons were. F1 · F3
Hiring manager of record
A retro on file for every hire closed this quarter.
Gate every start date behind an onboarding readiness check: equipment, access, first-week plan, named buddy. F2 · F4
The TA lead
The next cohort of hires lands with day one fully ready.
Review month one of the leadership pack against month three and name what moved. F1
The CEO
Leadership can state, from the pack, the three numbers that changed and why.
By Day 90 You Should See
A retrospective on file for every search that closed this quarter.
No start date confirmed without a ready first week behind it.
Leadership able to name, from the pack, the three numbers that moved and why.
How to Run This Plan
Give it one owner, not a committee. The TA lead is the natural choice: they already carry most of this by hand, and the plan's job is to give that work a structure to carry it.
Thirty minutes each fortnight: what shipped, what slipped, what is blocked. Then three checkpoint conversations, at days 30, 60 and 90, using the "what done looks like" column as the agenda. If it is done, tick it and move; if it is not, say why out loud.
When something slips, and something will, drop scope rather than sequence. A smaller version of the right next thing beats a complete version of the wrong one.
Protect · Don't break what's working
Your tools, and the person-to-person care that already exists. Do not buy new software: the stack is adequate and underused, and a purchase would let a software decision masquerade as a fix. And do not systemise away the human touches that work, the hiring manager's personal calls to final-stage candidates among them. Formalise them so they survive busy weeks; do not replace them.
14 · Where to From Here
How Calder Talent can help
This audit surfaced the specific points in Meridian's hiring where the gaps are real and the fixes are clear. The pattern across them is one issue wearing several costumes: leadership and the operators are working from different information. The ninety-day plan is yours to run without us. What follows is what it looks like when we build the underlying structure with you. Three engagements fit your findings, and each one ends with something built and running inside your business, not a recommendation deck.
The Role Briefing and Interview Sprint
Pillar 01 + 02, delivered as one combined build · answers F1 and F3
Your two widest gaps, the brief and the interview, fail together: briefs drift after approval, and what happens in an interview depends on who is running it. They are one build, not two, because an interview can only assess what the brief defines.
What We Build With You
A one-page role briefing standard capturing must-have criteria, 30/60/90-day success measures and team context. An intake workflow with a named owner at every step, and a sign-off that locks the brief before a role goes to market. Structured interview guides for your most-hired roles, with a scoring rubric per question. One-page scorecards each interviewer completes independently, before any group discussion. A debrief protocol that surfaces disagreement instead of burying it. And the training to run all of it: a briefing session for hiring managers and a half-day on structured interviewing.
How It Runs
One embedded engagement: six to eight weeks at two to three days a week, or ten to twelve at a lighter cadence. We build with the hiring manager, the TA lead and your hiring managers on live searches, so the change holds because people have used it, not because a document says so.
What It Changes for You
Which manager runs a search stops deciding its quality. The next brief cannot drift, the next panel scores the same things, and every decision is on record with the evidence that drove it. At sixty hires a year, this is the engagement that reaches all sixty.
The Candidate Communications Sprint
Pillar 03 · answers F2
Candidate experience is your most reassuring score and your most exposed one. The eleven-day silence was not one person's lapse; there is currently no owner and no clock on the moments that decide whether your chosen candidate says yes.
What We Build With You
A communication map of every touchpoint from application to day one, each with an owner and a maximum turnaround. The written templates for the moments that matter: acknowledgement, stage progression, rejection done properly, offer follow-up. An internal service level your business commits to, such as every final-stage candidate hearing from you within 48 hours. And configuration guidance so your existing systems send the routine messages automatically.
How It Runs
The fastest of the three: four weeks embedded, or six to eight at a lighter cadence. It can run alongside either of the other engagements.
What It Changes for You
Silence stops being structurally possible. The next the recent hire hears from you on a schedule the business has committed to, and offer acceptance stops leaking through the gap between final interview and contract.
The Pipeline Visibility and Reporting Sprint
Pillar 05 · answers F1 and F4
The gap between leadership's picture and the operators' is, mechanically, a reporting gap. The one-page pack in your ninety-day plan proves what leadership needs to see; this build makes that view permanent, automatic, and independent of any one person's late nights.
What We Build With You
Your ATS configured hands-on: pipeline stages, statuses and automated touchpoints, with a written usage standard every manager follows. A live pipeline dashboard showing open roles, candidates by stage and time in stage. Your core metrics established with a 90-day baseline: time to fill, offer acceptance, source of hire. And a session with your managers on why consistent data entry changes what leadership can see.
How It Runs
Four weeks embedded, or six to eight at a lighter cadence. We work with the tools you already have; we do not sell, migrate or take commissions on software.
What It Changes for You
The pack the TA lead builds by hand the night before exists on demand, whether or not they are in the building. Leadership governs hiring from the same picture as the people running it. And in ninety days you can prove, with a baseline, whether everything else in this report actually worked.
In What Order
The ninety-day plan runs regardless; it needs nobody but you. If we build together, the Role Briefing and Interview Sprint is the one your findings point at first, and it slots naturally into days 31 to 90 of the plan. Reporting usually follows once the manual pack has taught leadership what it wants to see permanently. Candidate communications can run alongside either.
What Falls Outside Our Scope
Calder Talent is platform-agnostic and does not recommend specific tools, vendors or ATS platforms. Employment law, organisational design, restructuring and compensation benchmarking fall outside our practice. Where this report touches those areas, we will tell you what you need and point you in the right direction.
Ready to act on these findings?
Calder Talent works with growth-stage companies to build the hiring infrastructure they need to scale without the noise. The first conversation is thirty minutes, at no cost, and it starts from your findings rather than a pitch.
caldertalent.com.au
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Meridian Health Group · Public edition · 8 July 2026