You know what I mean when I say, “That employee is a keeper.” It’s a great hire, somebody you want to stay around for years, moving up the ladder, enriching your organization with his or her particular skills and talents. But, even in shakey economies, employees (even great ones) leave the workplace.


They like the job itself.

The number one reason employees stay on the job is, they’re well suited to it. That’s all up to you, the professional doing the hiring. Use every tool in your arsenal, including intelligence and personality testing, online screening of candidates, and structured interviewing to weed out those who are unqualified and unsuited to the job, and make sure you’re hiring the best candidate.


They like the work environment and culture.

Retention is not just a matter of the employee having the right stuff for the job itself, it’s also a matter of how they fit with your corporate culture. I know of a woman who quit a job she was well-suited for because of something that never came up in the interview process — the company required its employees to sign out whenever they left the office, estimate the time they’d return and sign in with their actual return time when they got back to the office. Each night, the company owners would take this sheet home and study it, looking at who took 65 minutes for lunch and who took 45. This really rubbed the woman the wrong way — she felt higher ups didn’t trust their employees — and she ended up leaving in less than a year of being hired because of it.

Similarly, if your workplace is formal, make sure you hire candidates who are comfortable with wearing office attire every day. If everyone shows up in jeans and sweaters, make sure candidates won’t be put off by the informality.


They respect and like their supervisors.

In order to retain great new hires, you need to take a long, hard look at the people one rung up the ladder from those you’re hiring in order to make sure their personalities, work styles and communication methods match. One way to do this is by testing supervisors for their communication styles, and testing potential hires for how well they’d mesh. Another way is to do structured interviewing, talking about on-the-job situations and how they handled them.


They respect and like their co-workers.

There are few things more miserable than going to work everyday and encountering someone who grates on your nerves. I know people who still shudder when remembering co-workers in the next cubicle with whom they clashed. It’s more than enough to send a great employee packing. In order to “clone” your star employees, you need to test them for intelligence, personality traits and a whole host of other factors, and then use their scores as the benchmark when testing candidates for similar positions.








Charlie Wonderlic is the President and CEO of Wonderlic Inc., a premiere provider of employee recruitment, selection, development and retention solutions. For more information about customized hiring solutions from Wonderlic, visit www.wonderlic.com