Retention problems begin during the hiring process

http://managehrnetwork.blogspot.com/2008/10/retention-problems-begin-during-hiring.html
Retention Problems Begin During the Hiring Process
In most organizations the recruiting function is entirely separate from the retention effort, yet the design of the hiring process has a dramatic and direct impact on future turnover. More than one-third of the factors that drive future turnover have theirroots in the recruiting, hiring, and on-boarding process.
Recruiting Factors That Impact Future Retention
If you're interested in reducing turnover, here are some of the hiring-related factors that impact future retention:
1. The source where you found the candidate. Employees who make referrals have a personal interest in the individuals they refer succeeding on the job. As a result, theemployee making the referral has a tendency to mentor or guide that individual and will intervene to help the candidate if he or she gets frustrated. Sources of recruits who don't have that mentoring connection, like large job boards, almost always produce hires who quit at a much higher rate. Look at each of your early turnover cases and see which of your sources have above-normal turnover rates.2. Their average tenure in other jobs. Calculate how long, on average, any "serial quitters" stayed in their last several jobs as an indicator of how long they are likely to stay in this job. I am not saying you shouldn't hire people who change jobs frequently. They might be top performers who are simply in high demand or who work on projects with relatively short lifecycles. However, you shouldestimate their likely tenure, then mark it on your calendar, and then later, actively "re-recruit" them around the time they are "overdue" for change and are likely to begin looking for a new job.
3. Hiring candidates who are focused on money. Every candidate has his or her own set of motivators for taking and remaining in a job, and a significant percentage of people are motivated primarily by money.Money is the offer component that is the easiest to compare between firms, but it is also a factor that can change fast. Individuals whose primary motivator is money tend to be at the top of the turnover pyramid because they frequently "jump" to a new job as soon as a higher monetary offer comes in. No matter how good your initial starting salary, if your organization is slow to give raises,bonuses, stock rewards, or to counter outside offers, you will inevitably lose these individuals when more money comes along. Leading firms like Ernst & Young and Southwest Airlines understand this relationship and as a result, they specifically target hiring individuals who don't have the "give me the money" mentality. Incidentally, individuals hired from executive search firms can fall into this"money first" category. If they left the last job because an executive search professional presented a "better money" offer, don't be surprised when they leave again when the next executive search professional calls with slightly more money to offer. Solutions include targeting individuals from not-for-profits, government, education, and medicine. Also, share information on the maximum and minimumsalary, stock options, and bonus amounts (based on actual new-hire experience over the last two years). By providing only trend information from actual experience and carefully avoiding any direct promises to individual candidates, you can minimize legal issues and any misperceptions about the actual amounts that they "will" actually make. To determine a candidate's top motivators, give them asimple, one-page survey that requires them to force-rank the top and bottom factors that motivate them to change jobs. By forcing them to rank the top and bottom three "job change" motivators, you can get a good (though not perfect) idea of whether exceptional money is a critical factor. Options could include high base pay, bonus percentage, exceptional benefits, challenging work, learning and...