- “Why would you employ someone who has past evidence of not sticking around and no loyalty?”
- “ A good indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour”
- “Short stints at a company indicates failure”
- “Their just using a company as a stepping stone to a next job/promotion”
Does this indicate a butterfly that would be better well swerved or a missed opportunity to secure talent?
I’ve come across a few posts recently on Linkedin around gaps on a CV or employees having too many roles in quick succession with some interesting, some thoughtful and certainly some contrasting views on the “employability” of a candidate in this situation. I just wanted to look at this from an evidence based approach and add my tuppence worth.
In summary (and I’ve paraphrased here) the reason against seems to go as follows:
Never entertain
Let’s try and disect these:
1. “Why would you employ someone who has past evidence of not sticking around and no loyalty?”
Firstly what is the reason why the person left? Was the employee sold a vision on what the role looks like and this just didn’t materialise?
Thought you were going to set up a sales department but ended up wearing a hot dog costume to drum up business ? Sometimes a role doesn’t work out as expected , is there a magic number of how many times this can happen and make someone a bad employee? No not really looking into it and approaching like this seems somewhat arbitrary.
If the skill sets a great match for your business, explore the reasons why someone left , it might be you don’t feel the reasons add up; however there could also be valid reasons. There are lots of ways to assess for behavioural traits – these could be a better judge than gaps on a CV to make a decision on.
2. “ A good indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour” yep there’s some evidence to support this BUT it is a gross oversimplification. Factors such as those below are important to consider, :
- Future situation being very similar to past situation
- Prediction is best when there is a short time between past and future behaviour
- The person must basically be the same person now as they was then
- High-frequency habitual behaviours are more predictive than infrequent behaviours.
So what does this mean for recruitment? Firstly is your company/product the same as the candidates last employer? In all likelihood probably not, so why assume they will leave after a short period of time?
Secondly was it their most recent role that they left quickly or was it something a while back ? If it was the most recent role this might be more significant to back up the view of future performance ; however has anything changed with the person? What was going on externally , can you say they are the same person now as then ? More exploration is needed here.
Finally high-frequency behaviour are more predictive than infrequent behaviours, what is high frequency though? Be careful assuming. This could again have some weight on an employee’s future behaviour but there’s a lot of caveats above. Therefore it seems although you might not want to ignore gaps on CV, short time between roles from an evidence point of view you should look to explore these rather than dismiss out of hand.
3. “Short stints at a company indicates failure”
Failure definition | Lack of success
The criteria for failure depends on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system.
I’m not going to spend too much time on this point, as failure is very subjective. An unsuccessful period somewhere could also be a great learning curve to take into another role.
4. “Just using a company as a stepping stone to a next job”
How long is an acceptable time to stay in a business? Rather than looking at tenure consider what the employee delivered for their employer in the time they were there? It might be tricky to work ROI but it is a good mindset to have.
Consider what you say about your own company , your purpose and whether you know what employee’s goals are. Do these align with why people have left other roles?
The main takeaway point from an evidence approach is to not have a closed – mindset.
Definition | Closed minded having a mind firmly unreceptive to new ideas or arguments
It’s hard to argue with, much less convince, a closed-minded person.
Explore candidates, understand reasonings and then make judgements based on evidence.
Employee retention is sometimes approached differently in start up’s, please see some interesting views, articles & blogs below around this.
When your best employees leave – be happy
Note: This was written to discuss permanent moves, contracting is a very different proposition and by nature you are likely to see more moves! This is also worth noting when considering someone moving from contracting to perm (which we might see more of with changes to IR35).
Franklin.K (2013) The best predictor of future behaviour is….past behaviour. Psychology Today.
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