First-year turnover hurts, now more than ever in this uncertain business climate. When as many as 33 percent of new hires leave during their first six months, it can be discouraging. Keeping in mind most employees leave because their day-to-day role wasn’t as expected, because of a bad experience, or because of a culture clash, could the problem be with your recruitment and onboarding processes?

Your new hires are quitting because…

• You’re misrepresenting the job. This is the most common reason why employees quit early. From the job posting to onboarding to daily work life, the job duties need to match at every step. Imagine an employee’s surprise when they are hired and compensated as a low-level administrative assistant, yet are expected to do the job of an operations manager. Or on the flip side, imagine an employee who is hired as a game-changing operations manager, but performs the duties of an administrative assistant. The job requirements, responsibilities, and compensation need to live up to the initial pitch, or new hires will feel duped.
• You’re not recruiting for cultural fit. If you stop at the stack of resumes from qualified candidates, you’re crippling your hiring process. It’s not enough to ask who is technically capable of doing the job, you need to ask who can get the job done the way your company does it, according to your company’s culture. (You are measuring company culture regularly and objectively, right?)Cultural fit is so important—and a mismatch is the second leading reason why new hires quit—that some companies prioritize candidates who will mesh with the existing processes and personalities. The technical stuff can be taught.
• You’re not accurately explaining life at the company. A fast-moving extrovert will not do well in a meeting-heavy bureaucracy, and a measured introvert will not do well in a collaborative free-for-all. So share an honest snapshot of what your company is like on a typical day, as well as what it is like to work for the position’s immediate supervisor. You don’t need to out every skeleton, but you may want to mention potentially deal-breaking quirks, such as “We have three-hour staff meetings on Fridays,” or “We work in neighboring cubes but nobody says anything to anyone, ever.”
• You’re stopping onboarding at new-hire orientation. Orientation is a great way to show an employee the ropes; some companies even have multi-day seminars where department heads explains what their departments do in minute detail. But onboarding shouldn’t stop there (or perhaps, should never go there). Great onboarding introduces culture, work roles and procedures, goals, and personnel, to set employees up for success over the long term. The best onboarding processes will set structured checkpoints during the first year to ensure new hires are thriving with the tools and opportunities they need to succeed.
• You’re not trying to save new hires who want to quit. Not every new hire will stay—that’s just life. It could be you made a bad hire, but more likely, the recruitment and onboarding processes created a mismatch of expectations that you might be able to fix. When a new hire says they want to quit, talk to them about their reasoning. Are the duties out of line with the job posting? Are relations tough with a coworker? You might be able to correct the mismatch or bring the problem to an agreeable solution so that the employee will stay.

In conclusion, turnover happens. With recruitment and onboarding processes that create realistic expectations, you can attract and retain the talent best aligned to the job requirements and the company culture.