Our New Hires Keep Quitting After Their First Week

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

Several times recently, we’ve had new graduates accept a job at our company, then quit after their first week with no notice. Should I say something about how unprofessional this is, or let them learn the hard lesson on their own? Or can we do something during the hiring profess to make it clear this isn’t acceptable?

It’s frustrating for us, but also damaging to them as this is a very small industry where employees move between companies frequently. Burning a bridge that early in their career is going to hurt them badly in a few years either when they try to come back here, or when someone from here is now working at their next company. And yes, it’s absolutely going to happen — our entire industry is set up for this constant shift and flow between companies depending on who has active projects.

My guess is they say yes to our company and sign on, then get offered a job at a company that is working on a flashier project.

Where this gets even more unfortunate is that most of the people in this industry aren’t full-time staff, but per-project contractors. (We’re following the law there.) That said, everyone is treated with full benefits like retirement and health insurance. It’s just an industry where you get hired for a fixed duration instead of as ongoing. That leads to the huge company mobility, but also means that it’s very frowned upon to break a contract instead of completing the project.

I’m frustrated for what these abrupt departures mean for my teams when they’re suddenly short-staffed, but I’m also concerned that these new graduates don’t understand how quickly they’re going to get a reputation for being too flakey to hire at all. They aren’t facing any explicit repercussions for bailing to another company after just one week, but they’re trashing their reputations. That they might not even realize it is why we’re trying to figure out if and how we should say something to them.

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.