If you hire people in the future, there’s one thing I’m confident will be a challenge: retention. Not because we don’t expect people to leave - but because each time they do, it’ll cost us even more than it does now. My hypothesis? As those costs become more impactful on the business, who a recruiter hires isn’t the only measurement of their success. It’s who you keep.
Every talent strategy I’ve read that says it’s for the next 3 years - whether it’s IBM investing in junior talent or one that invests in more senior talent - are not considering what happens when people quit. If you invest in entry level talent, are you willing to develop people only to lose them when you have no role for them to grow into? Then, if you hire more senior people who hold bigger scopes, can you backfill an expert quickly?
But planning for people to leave is so counter-intuitive to the way we’ve always recruited, even as we see trends that suggest people are changing careers more often. Instead, we hire like the person will never leave then act hurt when they do. Know who they try to blame for the inevitable? Recruiting. But what can we do about it when we are only responsible for the hire and nothing after?
How Recruiters Can Help Employee Retention
As much as I want to tell you there’s some magical recruiting formula for getting people who won’t quit, that’s not real. There’s no signal on the resume. And no, just because someone has job hopped before doesn’t mean anyone will leave now.
Instead, recruiters need to focus on what they can communicate clearly during their contact with candidates before the offer. Of all the tactics you can take, that’s the one that will impact employee retention most.
Here’s what the research suggests.
| Provide a job preview. | Creating clarity in the job post about the day-to-day responsibilities will save you a lot of headaches. Any candidate should be able to close their eyes and picture the work. Nearly half (48%) of workers have left a job because it did not meet their initial expectations and 59% of these departures were caused by discrepancies in job responsibilities. |
| Align on pay early. | Underpaid people don’t stay and we don’t need any surveys to prove that. |
| Make sure there’s onboarding and training. | Onboarding sets the tone for the entire job. Make sure it operates smoothly. Employees engaged in comprehensive onboarding are 69% more likely to stay for at least three years. |
| Name the suck. | This might be controversial, but tell candidates why the job might suck. Let them opt in. |
Frankly, this is good practice now. You don’t need to wait for any kind of transformation to come to positively impact employee retention.
