Four Groups Blog

Thank you to Max Goldman’s blog for the title. We’ve also seen research by Ciampa and Watkins (1999) who claim that 64% of external hires ‘fail to make it in their new jobs’. Max writes;

Apparently, nearly 50% of employees fail in the first 18 months of their jobs. And we’re not just talking about individual contributors, either. Actually, the higher up you are, the more likely you are to fail…

Beyond that, bad managers, personality mismatches and lack of appropriate competencies are all good reasons for why new employees fail.

It’s always been a belief of mine that taking a job (or hiring someone) is like the beginning of a new relationship. There are all kinds of reasons why personal relationships fail. I’m sure we’re all familiar with many of them. Sometimes, even knowing our goals for the relationships is not enough to keep it alive when other parts are missing.

Anyway, on to the possible causes and solutions. We’re particularly passionate to understand why people’s relationships don’t always work out and equally, is it possible to predict them in advance of people joining a new employer or starting a new role? We’ve put together some of our thoughts and a possible solution around this aspect of recruitment strategy on our site.

Reference;
Ciampa, D. & Watkins, M. (1999). “Right from the Start: Common Traps for the New Leader.” Harvard Business School Press, Boston.