Bait and switch? A sizeable number of new hires leave those just-won jobs within the first six months of employment. The top reason? Company execs surveyed say the job turned out not to be what the new hires expected.
Executives responding to a survey conducted by the Futurestep division of Korn-Ferry say that new hire retention is an issue. In fact, a whopping 90 percent respondents say keeping new hires is an issue in their organization, with between 10 percent to 25 percent of new hires leaving within six months.
Recommended For You
The interview process leads those new hires to expect one thing, the survey finds, but the job turns out to be something else. And another 19 percent, according to respondents, cash in their chips because they don't like the company's culture. Fifteen percent say new hires leave because they don't like their bosses and another 15 percent say they don't see a potential for advancement.
Bill Gilbert, president, North America, Korn Ferry Futurestep, says in a statement that "[i]t's incumbent upon recruiters and hiring managers to paint a clear picture of what will be expected of the candidate in his or her new role, and make sure promises of resources, job structure and reporting relationships are fulfilled."
Related: Stagnation drives out employees
But it also holds true that they have to be up front about the company's culture, according to Tim Powell, managing director, ANZ — particularly for younger workers. In a statement, Powell says, "Especially for millennials, company culture is key to job satisfaction and companies must ensure they are correctly portraying the culture during the recruiting and onboarding processes."
Ninety-eight percent of respondents say that a major factor in retention is having an onboarding program, while 69 percent say their organization has formal onboarding programs for all employees. But those programs may be too short in duration to do the job, with 23 percent of respondents saying the programs last just a single day and 30 percent saying they only last a week.
Mentors would be helpful in helping new hires acclimate, say 98 percent of respondents, but close to half — 47 percent — say their companies don't have a mentorship program.
And while it could be useful to ask new employees their opinions of the recruiting experience and build on their responses to do a better job, just 29 percent say that new hires are even asked.
Of those who do conduct surveys, 52 percent say they do review the results regularly, then formulate or adjust hiring practices; 20 percent use the results to help with retention strategies; and 10 percent troubleshoot based on the data when there are problems. But 18 percent say they collect the data and then don't use it for anything.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
