Why is getting early career hiring “right” critical to the success of employers?

Hiring the right early-career professionals isn’t just about filling entry-level seats. It’s about laying a foundation for your company’s future success. From looming talent shortages to boosting innovation and retention, getting early-career hiring “right” can make a decisive difference across industries. The tone from HR experts is clear: invest in young talent now, or pay the price later.

In this post, we’ll explore research-backed reasons why early-career recruitment done well is so vital. The data – from sources like Gallup, SHRM, LinkedIn, McKinsey, and HBR – paints a compelling picture. Let’s dive in.

Bridging the Coming Talent Gap

Every employer is staring at a demographic shift. As veteran employees retire in droves, a new generation must step up. Hiring early-career talent is the only way to avoid a crippling skills gap in the near future:

• Wave of retirements: Baby Boomers (ages 55 to 75) still make up roughly one in four U.S. workers, but around 30 million of them will be eligible to retire in the next decade – about 10,000 per day​. This potential exodus threatens to drain companies of critical knowledge and skills.
• Pipeline urgency: Experts advise companies to proactively fill their talent pipelines with early-career candidates now, before the boomers bow out​. The savviest organizations are even pairing older experts with younger hires to transfer know-how and soften the blow of retirements​.
• Rising early-career recruitment: Employers are heeding the call. In fact, 2020 marked the tenth straight year of growth in early-career hiring​. Even in uncertain times, businesses have steadily increased entry-level recruitment – a clear sign that leaders recognize the need to infuse fresh talent continuously.

The message is simple: a huge talent changing of the guard is coming. Companies that build a bench of young talent now will be ready; those that don’t risk a serious talent vacuum.

Competitive Edge Through Early Talent Investment

Hiring smart isn’t just a defensive move for the future – it’s a winning strategy for today. Research shows that companies who keep investing in people (especially early-career people) gain a competitive advantage, even when others hesitate:

• Don’t freeze, flourish: During economic uncertainty, some firms freeze hiring. But studies found that companies who continued making strategic hires with an eye on the future were more likely to maintain market share, protect their brand reputation, and keep innovating and growing​. In contrast, those that stopped investing in talent often faced negative repercussions down the road​. In short, pausing hiring can set you back; smart hiring propels you forward.
• Talent-centric = higher returns: McKinsey research shows that organizations putting talent at the center of their business strategy achieve higher total shareholder returns than their peers. Bringing in the right people – and giving them support to succeed – directly correlates with better financial performance.
• Future-ready workforce: Across industries, early-career employees often drive new ideas and adapt quickly. Consistently infusing your teams with promising young professionals means you’re building in-house skills to meet tomorrow’s challenges. When markets shift or technology evolves, you’ll have people ready to respond.

The takeaway: making early-career hiring a strategic priority isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s a proven way to stay ahead of the competition and build resilience for the future.

Diversity and Fresh Perspectives Fuel Innovation

Another big payoff of early-career hiring is the diversity and fresh perspective it brings. Today’s new graduates and young professionals are the most diverse cohort in history – and diversity, as numerous studies show, drives better business results:

• Most diverse generation: Gen Z (born ~1997 onward) is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation ever, with nearly 48% of Gen Z Americans identifying as non-white. By hiring early-career talent from this cohort, employers infuse their workforce with a richness of backgrounds and viewpoints that older generations simply didn’t have.
• . Supporting that, McKinsey reported companies in the top quartile for gender and ethnic diversity are 33% more likely to outperform their industry peers in profitability. In other words, diversity isn’t an HR metric – it’s a business imperative.
• Better decisions & innovation: Diverse teams flat-out make better decisions. One study found that diverse teams make superior decisions up to 87% of the time compared to all-male or all-white teams​. They also tend to be more innovative and have higher morale, with lower turnover rates. Fresh perspectives prevent groupthink and spur creativity, which every industry needs to stay competitive.
• Entry-level hiring = lasting diversity: What’s the quickest way to make an organization more diverse for the long haul? Hire diverse talent at the entry level. Today’s pool of early-career candidates is far more diverse than previous generations, so bringing in new grads is one of the fastest ways to increase diversity that lasts. Those hires grow into tomorrow’s managers and leaders, multiplying the impact over time.

In short, getting early-career hiring right can transform your workforce DNA. You’re not only enriching your culture; you’re also reaping the tangible rewards – better decision-making, innovation, and financial performance – that come with a diverse team.

Tech-Savvy Innovators from Day One

Early-career hires are often digital natives – a generation that grew up swiping, typing, and Googling. In a world where every company is partly a technology company, that native tech fluency is a game-changer:

• Digital natives at work: Gen Z and younger Millennials have never known a world without the internet, smartphones, and social media. Technology is a second language to them. This means they adapt quickly to new software, tools, and platforms, often picking them up faster than senior staff. An early-career hire might introduce your team to the latest productivity app or automate a tedious process, boosting efficiency in ways that didn’t occur to others.
• Agility in a fast-changing world: Businesses today face rapid technological change – from AI to automation – and it’s only accelerating. In fact, experts (including McKinsey analysts) predict that the next decade will see more technological progress than the last 100 years combined. Having tech-savvy young professionals on board is vital to keep up. They can help your company stay agile, embrace new tools, and innovate rather than fall behind.
• Innovation mindset: Early-career employees come with fresh eyes. They aren’t set in “the way we’ve always done it.” This openness, coupled with digital know-how, often leads them to spot creative solutions. Whether it’s leveraging social media trends for marketing or using data analytics in new ways, young talent can inject innovative thinking into everyday business challenges.

Bringing in early-career hires who are comfortable with technology ensures your organization doesn’t become a dinosaur. Instead, you’ll have a workforce ready to harness new tech and drive innovation across the business.

Highly Educated, Highly Capable

Today’s entry-level talent pool is arguably the most educated in history – and that translates into a highly skilled workforce for employers who tap into it. By hiring early-career professionals, you’re gaining people with strong theoretical knowledge and a hunger to apply it:

• Best-educated generation: Gen Z is on track to be the best-educated generation ever. As of a few years ago, 59% of Gen Z teens were pursuing college (significantly higher than prior generations at the same age). They also boast higher high school graduation rates and lower dropout rates than millennials or Gen X did. In short, many entry-level candidates today come equipped with solid educational backgrounds.
• Skills to meet tomorrow’s jobs: That education isn’t just a nice credential – it directly aligns with labor market needs. By 2027, roughly 70% of jobs will require some form of postsecondary education. Hiring college-educated graduates now is essentially future-proofing your talent pool. Moreover, a well-educated workforce tends to be more productive and innovative; skilled workers perform tasks more efficiently and drive higher rates of innovation. An early-career hire with up-to-date knowledge can often hit the ground running and contribute new ideas from day one.
• Real-world skills and eagerness to learn: Importantly, young professionals aren’t just book-smart – they value practical skills too. Surveys indicate Gen Z places a high priority on “real-world” abilities like communication, problem-solving, and teamwork. In fact, some have dubbed Gen Z the most entrepreneurial and problem-solving generation yet. They tend to be eager learners, keen to apply their skills and continue learning on the job. For an employer, that means a burst of energy and adaptability in the workplace. These newcomers are often willing to take on challenges and prove themselves.

Bringing in highly educated, eager-to-grow talent provides an immediate boost and a long-term asset. You get the benefit of fresh knowledge and modern skillsets – and if you nurture them, you’ll develop seasoned experts and leaders for years to come.

The High Cost of Getting It Wrong

What happens if companies bungle early-career hiring? In short: high turnover, wasted resources, and damage to team morale. Failing to engage and retain your young hires is an expensive mistake – one that businesses can’t afford to ignore:

• Quick exits are common: Many employers struggle with retention of entry-level employees. More than half of young workers (age 17–24) in one survey said they planned to leave their job in less than a year, and under a quarter described themselves as “highly satisfied” in their role. When your new hires have one foot out the door that quickly, something is wrong – and it’s costing you.
• Turnover wrecks the bottom line: Replacing employees is costly. Estimates vary, but multiple studies peg the cost of losing an employee at anywhere from six to nine months of that employee’s salary on the low end to as much as 200% of annual salary on the high end​(depending on the role and how hard it is to refill). Think about that: losing a $50k entry-level employee might cost $25–100k in recruitment, training, and lost productivity. Scale that across numerous roles, and the dollars are enormous. In industries like retail and hospitality that rely heavily on entry-level staff, turnover costs billions each year.
• Collateral damage of bad hiring: The costs aren’t just financial. High turnover and disengaged employees create ripple effects: higher absenteeism, more workplace accidents, lower productivity and profitability, worse customer service, even a lower share price for public companies. And within teams, constant churn hurts morale. Remaining employees can get demoralized or burnt out covering vacancies. As Harvard Business Review notes, a bad hiring decision doesn’t just hit your wallet – it also drags down team morale and company culture.
• Onboarding and support matter: Often, early-career turnover is a preventable problem. New hires who feel neglected or out of place will leave. Yet Gallup finds only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding newcomers. That failure to create an early bond can make or break retention – not surprising, since as SHRM reports, employee turnover can be up to 50% in the first 18 months if newcomers feel disconnected​. In other words, half your new college hires could be gone by their second work anniversary if you’re not actively engaging them.

Every time an early-career hire walks out the door prematurely, it’s a double loss – you lose a future seasoned employee and you’ve wasted the time/money spent recruiting and training them. Getting it wrong is simply too expensive, in every sense.

Engagement and Development: The Payoff of Getting it Right

So what does “getting it right” look like? It starts with viewing early-career hires as a long-term investment – offering them the support, development, and engagement they need to thrive. Do that, and the research shows your business will thrive too:

• Investment yields returns: Companies that foster a high-development culture – one that actively develops employees’ skills and careers – see powerful results. Gallup finds that organizations which make a strategic investment in employee development report 11% higher profitability, and they’re twice as likely to retain their employees compared to those that don’t. In essence, when you grow your people, you grow your profits.
• Young talent crave growth: Multiple studies confirm that career development is the make-or-break factor for younger employees. Nearly 9 in 10 millennials say professional development or career growth opportunities are very important to them in a job. It’s no surprise, then, that the number one reason people of all ages leave a job is for “career growth opportunities” elsewhere. Early-career hires, especially, will not stick around if they feel stuck or stagnant.
• Gen Z expectations: For Gen Z, these priorities are even more pronounced. According to LinkedIn’s research, Gen Z workers are about 50% more likely than Gen X workers to prioritize opportunities to advance and learn new skills in their careers. They also care about an inclusive, engaging work environment. If you want to attract and keep the best young talent, you must demonstrate that they can learn, grow, and belong at your organization.
• How to win their loyalty: The formula for retaining early-career employees isn’t a mystery – it’s about providing mentorship, training, feedback, and clear advancement paths. For example, managers who take an active role in coaching their new team members, and companies that outline how a new hire can progress in 1, 3, 5 years, tend to see much higher loyalty. When young employees see a future with you, they’re more than twice as likely to stay beyond that one-year mark. Engaged and appreciated, they often become your most passionate contributors.

In short, when you invest in your young employees, they invest back in your business – through higher engagement, better performance, and longer tenure. Onboarding them thoughtfully, challenging them with learning opportunities, and recognizing their contributions creates a positive feedback loop that fuels business success.

We reached out to 11 hiring experts to get their takes on the important of early career hiring to the success of employers:

• Invest in Future Leaders
• Hire Intentionally for Long-Term Success
• Build a Foundation for Tomorrow
• Choose Early Hires as Informal Mentors
• Cultivate Potential for Lasting Impact
• Accelerate Growth with Strategic Early Hires
• Shape Company Culture Through First Hires
• Align Early Hires with Organizational Values
• Foster Learning Agility in New Talent
• Empower Brand Advocates Through Hiring
• Create Pathways for Next-Generation Talent

Invest in Future Leaders

Early career hires build the future pipeline for leadership, knowledge, innovation, and culture. Getting it right early means investing in the long-term strength of your company.

Tip 1: Hire A-players from the earliest age. If you can attract top talent at the start of their careers, it will save you time and money down the line. These high performers become your future leaders, and they’re much harder to find–and more expensive–once they’re further along in their careers.

Tip 2: Ensure that a healthy percentage of your workforce is made up of early career talent. These individuals bring energy, fresh ideas, and novel ways of thinking. They challenge outdated processes and help you stay relevant in a rapidly evolving world.

Tip 3: Build a culture that encourages mixing between levels. Traditional mentorship usually goes top-down–senior mentoring junior–but I believe in flipping that too. Have your younger employees mentor senior executives in areas they excel in, like AI, social media, or new ways of working. This creates a more open, collaborative, and future-forward culture that benefits everyone.

Vivian Chen, Founder & CEO, Rise Jobs

Hire Intentionally for Long-Term Success

If you get early-career hiring wrong, you spend more time managing behavior than developing talent. You find yourself correcting basic mistakes, trying to rebuild confidence, or addressing issues that could have been avoided with better alignment from the start. The cost isn’t just money; it’s time, morale, and trust across the team. Every poor hire impacts the surrounding culture, slows down the pace, and distracts leadership from focusing on growth.

But when you get early-career hiring right, it creates a ripple effect of momentum and consistency. The right people, brought in at the right stage, absorb your values quickly, take initiative, and raise the standard around them. They become multipliers, adding energy, asking smart questions, and growing into roles you didn’t even plan for yet. That’s the compound return of hiring with intention.

The way to get there is simple, but not easy. Vet for initiative; don’t just look at experience or school. Ask about how they’ve handled difficult situations or sought growth without being told. Create guardrails for accountability; don’t micromanage, but make it clear what “good” looks like from day one, and hold people to that standard. And build a feedback loop that runs both ways. When someone’s early in their career, they need coaching, but they also have insight into what’s confusing, inefficient, or missing from your process. Listen to that, and you improve more than just your hiring; you improve the whole system.

Sean Smith, CEO & ex Head of HR, Alpas Wellness

Build a Foundation for Tomorrow

Getting early career hiring right is one of the most critical things any business can do. The people you hire at the beginning of their careers will not only define your team today, but they will establish your company’s culture and future success tomorrow. These emerging professionals tend to be the leaders of tomorrow, shaping innovation and growth. By investing in hiring the best talent, you’re building long-term organizational power.

Here are three secrets to early career recruitment success:

1. Value potential over experience. Your early career employees won’t have extensive resumes, but they have creative ideas, enthusiasm, and a willingness to learn. Hire individuals with critical thinking, flexibility, and problem-solving skills, which your company will benefit from for years to come.

2. Put a huge emphasis on development and mentoring. Empowering early hires to develop in their careers enhances their performance, as well as generates a sense of belonging and commitment towards your organization.

3. Create an open culture of transparency and inclusiveness. Early career employees prefer working in an environment where they feel motivated, heard, and appreciated. When they believe they have a legitimate opportunity to grow with the organization, they will be more willing to stay and repay it down the road.

The right early hires will take your business to heights that transcend mere job duties. They’ll help drive your company’s vision, create innovation, and define the future. Invest, and the dividends will come.

Friddy Hoegener, Co-Founder and President, SCOPE Recruiting

Choose Early Hires as Informal Mentors

Your early hires aren’t just employees–they’re the foundation of your company. Whether formally or not, they will become mentors to everyone who joins after them. That’s why it’s critical to approach these first hires with a long-term leadership mindset.

Even if they aren’t in management roles on paper, early team members set the tone. They’ll be the ones answering questions, modeling behavior, and shaping how new hires integrate into the team. So, choose them with mentorship in mind.

Start by prioritizing seasoned professionals. In the early stages of a company, you need people who bring not only skills but also stability. Experience often brings a level of perspective and calm that newer professionals haven’t developed yet–qualities that naturally inspire confidence in those around them.

Next, look for signs of teaching ability. Ask how they’ve trained others, onboarded teammates, or shared knowledge in past roles. Do they show patience? Can they break down complex ideas in a relatable way? Mentorship isn’t just about seniority–it’s about the willingness and ability to lift others up.

Finally, support them in this mentoring role. Many early hires don’t expect to become default guides for new employees, so make this expectation clear–and give them the tools to succeed. Offer basic leadership training, coaching strategies, or even simple check-ins to see how they’re handling the added responsibility. When early hires feel prepared to lead informally, it elevates the whole team.

Strong early hires don’t just help you scale–they help you scale well.

Rob Reeves, CEO and President, Redfish Technology

Cultivate Potential for Lasting Impact

Getting these hires right matters because early career employees grow with your company. When you bring in someone who has the right mindset and potential, they become a long-term asset who absorbs your culture, adapts quickly, and scales with the business. 

But when those hires are rushed or misaligned, you don’t just lose productivity; you lose time, mentorship capacity, and momentum across the team.

Here are three ways employers can get it right:

1. Hire for potential, not perfection.

Early career candidates won’t come in with years of experience or a polished track record, but that’s not what makes them valuable. What matters is how fast they learn, how well they take feedback, and whether they ask thoughtful questions that show curiosity and growth potential. If you look only for what they’ve done, you’ll miss what they’re capable of doing in the right environment.

2. Assign them a strong manager.

The first manager someone works under can make or break their trajectory. Early career hires need structure, support, and a manager who’s willing to invest time in coaching them. That relationship builds confidence, helps them avoid repeated mistakes, and keeps them moving in the right direction, especially in fast-paced environments.

3. Set expectations clearly from the start.

One of the biggest reasons early career hires struggle is because no one tells them what “good” looks like. They’re left guessing. But when goals, responsibilities, and feedback loops are clear, they gain direction fast, and they’re far more likely to meet or exceed expectations early on.

Stephen Greet, CEO & Co-Founder, BeamJobs

Accelerate Growth with Strategic Early Hires

Getting early career hiring right matters because early hires set your floor, not your ceiling. They become your second line faster than you think. Give it 12 months, and they are handling client calls, managing projects, and representing your brand when you are not in the room. If your base layer is shaky, everything built on top of it wobbles. We saw this happen once when we rushed hiring for five assistant project managers. Two stayed. Three burned out. It cost us $42,000 in wasted training hours and temp backfills. That lesson stuck.

First tip: hire for coachability, not polish. Second tip: immerse them in real projects within 14 days, not 90. Third tip: build a feedback loop that operates weekly, not quarterly. Early career hires thrive on speed, clarity, and direct energy. If you coddle or slow-walk them, you lose their fire. If you thrust them into the game quickly and give them tight, constructive feedback, you build loyalty and skill simultaneously.

You do not build future leaders by protecting them. You build them by trusting them early when the stakes are still manageable.

Rick Newman, CEO and Founder, UCON Exhibitions

Shape Company Culture Through First Hires

Company culture tends to be self-perpetuating, and if early hires don’t align with the environment you’re trying to build, it can be incredibly difficult to reverse course. The tone, energy, and unwritten rules of your workplace are often established in those first few hires, and they tend to stick.

While expansion often brings a focus on skills, retention, and turnover rates, culture is just as critical to long-term success—and too often overlooked.

To lay a strong cultural foundation, I recommend three key steps:

First, define the kind of culture you want to build. Is your business centered on innovation or focused on refining existing systems? Are you aiming for a relaxed, collaborative environment, or a more structured, performance-driven atmosphere? How important are autonomy, continuous learning, or cross-functional collaboration?

Second, refine your job descriptions. Make sure they reflect not just the technical qualifications, but the traits and values you want on your team. If adaptability, curiosity, or team orientation matter, say so clearly—and give examples of how those qualities show up in the role.

Finally, don’t rush through interviews—especially face-to-face interactions. Resumes can be polished, and candidates often know what you want to hear. But real alignment is best gauged in conversation. Early on, every hire plays a role in shaping the identity of your company. Take the time to get it right.

Company culture is crucial. Be intentional in early hiring and you’ll find the kind of well-rounded employees you need to reach the next level.

Michael Moran, Owner and President, Green Lion Search

Align Early Hires with Organizational Values

The individuals you bring into your organization early in their careers often become the cultural anchors of your company. They carry the values forward, but only if they’re rooted in those values from day one. Hiring correctly in this regard is how you protect your foundation. The early-career stage is where habits, mindset, and expectations are formed, and if you set that bar clearly and consistently, they won’t just follow it; it becomes second nature to them.

When early-career hires understand your mission and see how their daily work connects to it, they operate with purpose. That alignment is what sustains motivation long after the initial onboarding excitement wears off. Skills can be taught over time, but mission alignment has to be present from the beginning. That’s why I don’t just look at what’s on a resume; I pay close attention to how someone talks about growth, impact, and team.

And orientation? Never skip it. It’s not just a formality; it’s your chance to model the culture, explain expectations, and make people feel like they belong. That first impression shapes how they show up every day after. Early-career hiring, when done right, isn’t just about filling seats; it’s about planting seeds for the future of your business. If you get it right, those people will eventually become the ones reinforcing the culture for the next generation.

Ryan Hetrick, CEO, Epiphany Wellness

Foster Learning Agility in New Talent

Early-career hires shape your future leadership pipeline — and if you get it wrong, you’re building on a weak foundation. It’s not just about skills; it’s about teachability, mindset, and alignment with your culture. Here are 3 tips:

1. Screen for learning agility — Ask about how they handled failure or picked up a new skill quickly.

2. Set expectations clearly — Don’t oversell the job; tell them what the day-to-day really looks like.

3. Offer early feedback loops — Weekly check-ins for the first month can reveal misalignment early, while building trust fast.

Pankaj Khurana, VP Technology & Consulting, Rocket

Empower Brand Advocates Through Hiring

In my experience, new hires often talk about their work online and in social spaces. The right early-career hire can organically build your brand reputation. For instance, they can attract top talent to your company and gain a positive image. I must say that making an excellent first impression is critical in the business world, and these new hires can be your brand’s future ambassadors.

My best tip is to ask about their online presence in interviews, offer LinkedIn branding workshops as onboarding perks, and encourage content creation such as “a day in my job” videos. For instance, you can provide them with branded merchandise to promote your company on social media platforms.

Try to create a “new eyes” feedback form after 30 days, reward suggestions that improve workflows, and host a rookie-only retrospective meeting quarterly. I have seen that this helps with retention and fosters a culture of continuous improvement and innovation. I would point out that happy employees are more likely to become loyal brand advocates and attract top talent to your company.

One more tip is to create an “Ask Why” Slack channel, schedule innovation sprints led by junior staff, and reward contrarian thinking early in their journey. I have found it very effective to encourage junior staff to question established processes and offer fresh perspectives. This empowers them and challenges the status quo, leading to new ideas that can drive business growth.

Kevin Baragona, Founder, Deep AI

Create Pathways for Next-Generation Talent

Nailing early-career hiring isn’t just about filling seats; it’s about building the next generation of problem-solvers, brand ambassadors, and future leaders who will carry your business forward. Bring the right young talent on board, and you’ll enjoy fresh ideas, boundless energy, and an engaged workforce that grows with you.

Three tips to get it right:

1. Sell the journey, not just the job. Early-career candidates crave clear pathways: show them where they can go, who will mentor them, and how you’ll invest in their growth.

2. Hire for potential over pedigree. Grades and past titles matter less than curiosity, adaptability, and coachability—skills that predict success in fast-moving roles.

3. Make onboarding a community kickoff. Pair rookies with buddy mentors, run cohort-based training, and schedule regular “check-ins” so they feel supported (and stick around).

By treating your college hires as long-term investments from day one, you’ll cultivate loyalty, drive innovation, and build a talent pipeline that keeps your business thriving.

Gary Edwards, Owner, Voceer