Our company hires the best and brightest, mainly right out of college, to join our sales organization. We then provide them with world-class training for three to five years—only to lose them to our competitors one after another when it’s done. What are we doing wrong?
Our best guess is that your great talent is “graduating” from your great training program into a company that hasn’t put nearly enough energy into great job content. After all, top performers who are all fired up to conquer the world—or at least the marketplace—don’t want to be told they have to wait in line before they can make an impact. Or that they’re being placed in a small job that will lead to a somewhat less small job, and so on. They want to be told that their future will come as fast and be as big as they can make it. Could it be your competitors are saying that more loudly than you are?
Don’t get us wrong. Talented young people can’t expect to burst out of a development program into a corner office. But unless you give them a way to move up quickly, with fun and challenge along the way, you’ll have to be satisfied with something it seems you already have: a reputation for being the best training ground around.
This question and answer originally appeared in Business Week magazine on May 21, 2007.
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