Actual Comments on Why Employees Leave:

“I feel the job was misrepresented. The job description made me to believe the position was a true System Administrator position when it was not. The actual job was more of a help desk position for servers. It was mundane and did not really allow someone to experience an enterprise networking environment as the job description lead me to believe.”

The Solution

While we do not know whether this situation occurred while hiring a new employee or while offering an existing employee a new position, the result was the loss of an employee. It is always tempting to over hire the skills required for a position. Employers, however, often find this out the hard way, which makes taking the time to really evaluate the required skills for the position before filling it well worth the effort.

The obvious costs associated with job misrepresentation and over hiring, are the costs of an “empty chair”, lost productivity, coverage replacement while a position is open, recruiting costs, etc. There are also costs that organizations typically don’t think about when over hiring for a position and that is overpaying for the skills required for the position. Overpaying is an ongoing cost that is compounded from year to year and also impacts benefits costs.

In this situation, the recruiter and manager may have oversold the position but it can also be said the applicant did not do a good job researching what the actual position entailed. The hiring process for any position is a two-way street. Employers should be interviewing the recruit while at the same time the candidate should be interviewing the employer. One has to question the depth of the interview that took place for this particular position. Typically, the recruiter and manager would have covered real-life situations to ascertain the skills of the person being interviewed. The applicant would have asked questions around the extent of the responsibility, latitude for carrying out responsibilities, and potential growth therefore reducing the chances of over hiring.

While we don’t know if this was a case of job misrepresentation or over hiring, since we only have one side of the story, this story does tell the importance of the interviewing process. Ultimately, the end goal is to find the right fit for the right job and not just find a person to fill the role. The cost of an incorrect hire is too great to do otherwise.

(This blog post is brought to you by HSD Metrics, an exit interview company that helps companies reduce employee turnover by providing automated reference checking, exit interviews, and by measuring employee retention. The comments from exiting employees that are featured in this blog are collected from actual exit interviews conducted using ExitRight®, HSD Metrics’ exit interviewing service. If you are interested in learning more, contact us today. Because we place the privacy of our clients at the top of our priority list; the names of all involved parties are kept completely confidential.)