🌍 What’s the Problem?
Companies traditionally value long-term employees. The longer someone stays, the better their profit-to-loss ratio.
Every hire costs money: search, recruitment, onboarding. If someone leaves after a month, you lose money. The longer an employee stays, the less those initial costs matter.
So companies fight hard to keep talent. But how can you predict how long someone will stay before investing too much in hiring?
🧩 How Do Most People Solve It?
Recruiters often screen job histories to filter out “job hoppers” — people whose roles last less than a year.
That’s valid, but there’s a catch.
High retention numbers on a CV are often treated as a godsend — a signal of stability. But stability doesn’t always mean growth.
🌱 Why Doesn’t It Work?
I once interviewed a candidate with 12 years of experience. The recruiter was proud. I was suspicious. Nine of those 12 years were spent at the same company doing very specific work.
The problem wasn’t technology — anyone can catch up on tools. It was best practices and exposure. You build expertise by seeing different approaches across different teams. Otherwise, you risk becoming like a plant that’s never repotted — alive, but stunted.
Such employees often carry a Senior title in their old company. In reality, they perform at a Junior or weak Mid level — but still expect senior pay.
That’s a costly surprise once onboarding begins.
🧭 How Can You Solve It Differently?
Use this quick decision tree to filter out over-retained candidates early:
Assess Your Situation
Is it worth spending extra time validating this CV? (Consider whether you have stronger candidates in your pipeline.)
If yes, go to Step 2
If no, you’ve saved time and money early
Gather Information
Ask your recruiter to collect all role-relevant details for the last five years of the candidate’s career.
If yes, proceed to Step 3
If no, skip the CV and move on
Involve Your Experts
Have your Lead or Senior engineers review the CV and recruiter’s notes.
If yes, proceed to the tech interview
If no, move to the next candidate
⚙️ Start Improving the Process Now
A golden rule for sustainable hiring: Focus on candidates with 2–5 years per company.
That’s long enough to build deep expertise — yet short enough to stay current with evolving best practices.
Start this week:
Update your recruitment process with input from recruiters and tech leads.
Prioritize candidates with 2–5-year retention history.
Improve internal retention — build a creative, engaging environment where people actually want to grow.
💬 Your Turn
Have you ever hired someone over-retained who turned out outdated in their field? Reply to this letter or DM me on X — I’d love to hear your story.