The 90-Day Breakup

The manager spent 11 months looking for and finally finding a new job. It took 42 interviews and hundreds of résumé sends. But only weeks later, she shocked herself and her firm: She quit.

Brutal though today’s job market may be, it’s full of surprises too. On the one hand, four of ten applicants are unemployed for an average of 15 or more weeks; on the other, corporate retention of new hires is down: In 2025, 84.6% of employees were still employed after three months, compared to 93.9% in 2024, based on new numbers from Employ.  For many, the workplace-honeymoon phase has grown less rosy. “The first three months should be full of promise, excitement, and energy,” says Kendra Marion, vice president of global assessment services at Korn Ferry—and shouldn’t abruptly end with a resignation or severance letter.

Counterintuitively, the challenging job market may be fueling lower retention rates. Applicants apply for dozens of positions, hear crickets, and go on to submit even more applications. The average job candidate applies for between 30 and 200 roles. As time passes, they’re increasingly likely to accept any offer that appears. “The jobs they took were probably ‘step jobs’ that they weren’t exactly thrilled with,” says Dennis Deans, global human resources business partner at Korn Ferry. If a surprise job offer emerges after a month in the new position, employees—facing the choice of staying in a “meh” role or leaping to a more fulfilling one—say adios.

But to a far greater degree, experts pin early-hire retention on the constant flux in firms’ strategies, which have often coincided with the onboarding time of many new employees. For example, many firms have reversed themselves on return-to-office mandates, so that employees hired earlier in the year have been denied the flexibility they were promised. Many more companies shelved projects, initiatives, and expansions amidst all the tariff and geopolitical turbulence—which has also been tricky for new candidates, many of whom signed on before plans were rolled back, to navigate. “Some probably did not have the opportunities they were anticipating, and felt disillusioned,” says Ron Porter, senior partner at Korn Ferry.

To be sure, if workers get past the 90-day period, they’re likely going to stay at least while longer. The same survey showed that first-year turnover rates fell to 12.1% in 2025 from 23.7% in 2024. Still this may suggest that firms’ poor hiring choices have backfired early on. “If organizations are compressing hiring timelines and taking short cuts in assessment and evaluation, that can lead to higher turnover,” says engagement expert Mark Royal, senior client partner for Korn Ferry Advisory. Simply put, busy hiring managers are perhaps not able to fully dedicate themselves to finding good fits.

At firms that are facing poor retention numbers, experts advise doubling down on communication with new hires, especially around corporate shifts in plans. The idea is to proactively communicate before these workers head for the exits. “By the time an employee says ‘I’m leaving,’ they’ve made up their mind, and the company is reacting,” says Porter. Managers should aim to hear new employees’ concerns early and often, he says.

And firms can work harder on making sure that job descriptions match realities. “New hires are constantly evaluating whether they made the right choice,” says Marion, who notes that new employees expect to gel with their teams amidst the culture that was described. If they think they’ve been sold a bill of goods, she says, “then they’ll start looking elsewhere early.”

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