This timeline also aligns with what's showing up in employer-side data. MRA's 2026 Turnover Survey found that 65% of all employee separations happen within an employee's first 1-2 years on the job, which points to early-tenure retention as one of the biggest pressure points employers deal with. Insight Global puts early departures at 22% of new hires leaving within their first 90 days, with most of that traced back to weak onboarding rather than the candidate being a bad fit on paper.

Crucially, none of that mismatch shows up until after the offer is signed, the onboarding is done, and the role has already been vacated once. Replacing an early-career hire costs real money in sourcing, interviewing, training time, and lost productivity while the seat sits empty. And according to the Work Institute's 2025 Retention Report, 75% of voluntary exits were preventable.

Our survey data backs that up from the talent side. When we asked students whether completing a pre-hire assessment for a company made them more likely to stay there long-term, 94% said yes. That's about as close to unanimous as survey data gets, and it's a strong signal that working with a company before committing to it changes how students feel about staying.

It's not just about enjoying the work, either. When we asked what actually keeps students in a role long-term, salary and benefits (obviously) led at 72%, but work-life balance (64%), growth and advancement opportunities (63%), and company culture (59%) weren't far behind. Pay matters to everyone, but so does whether the day-to-day work and the culture matches what a hire actually wants out of the position.

Knowing how telling a first week is, Parker Dewey designs paid working interviews aligned with what your new hires will do, giving them an opportunity to test out the role before either of you commit.

While an early-career candidate invests about 10 hours of time in total to research potential sales prospects, document their rationale, and draft example outreach, a hiring manager can spend 15-20 minutes reviewing the work, offering feedback or redirection, and quickly evaluating whether the candidate has critical thinking and adaptability to succeed in business development. This results in candidates who have a hands-on understanding of a core part of a role, see the type of direction and feedback from a manager they could work with, and fast track the ‘first-week’ experience on both sides, well before investing in onboarding.

If you’re looking to improve early-career retention or finding the candidates you convert aren’t getting up to speed fast enough, it’s time to step back and re-think how you’re evaluating candidates.

Interested in the full findings? Check out our 2026 Student Sentiments Survey.