4 in 5 Hires Are Replacing Someone Who Left
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the measure of a successful hire was that the seat was filled. Someone left, an advert went out, applications came in, interviews happened, and eventually somebody new sat down at the desk. The focus was on speed and volume. If you had enough candidates in the pipeline, the thinking went, you would find the right one somewhere in the mix.
That thinking has shifted, and if you have been involved in hiring over the past couple of years, you will have felt it. The 2026 UK Candidate Attraction Report found that application volumes are continuing to rise, and yet hiring the right person has not become any easier. In fact, 34% of recruiters say that unrealistic expectations from hiring managers remain one of the biggest challenges they face. Companies are receiving more applications than they ever have and finding it harder than ever to identify the people who will succeed in the role and stay in it long enough to make the investment worthwhile.
What sits behind that difficulty is worth understanding, because it tells you something about where the market has moved. 78% of UK hiring is now driven by replacement roles, with only around 20% linked to genuine expansion. That is a striking number. It means the vast majority of recruitment activity is not about growth. It is about refilling positions that have already been filled at least once before. Most organisations know that high turnover is expensive, though not all of them have sat down and worked out exactly how expensive it can be when you factor in the time lost, the knowledge that walks out the door, and the cost of going through the whole process again.
Missed Opportunity
This is something I have been thinking about a lot recently, because we see it in the conversations we are having with the people we work alongside. The quality of hire has become the priority, and rightly so. Getting the right person into the right role is no longer a nice-to-have outcome from the recruitment process. It is the whole point of it. And there is more data, more tooling, and more science available now to support that decision than at any point I can remember.
Here is where it gets interesting, though, and this is the part that stays with me. So much of that insight, the behavioural data, the assessment results, the understanding of how someone is wired and what drives them, is used to make the hiring decision and then it disappears. The offer goes out, the contract is signed, the new hire starts, and everything that was learned about them during the process sits in a folder somewhere, untouched. It is as if the data served its purpose, and its purpose was only ever to answer one question: should we hire this person?
I think that is a missed opportunity, and it is one that compounds the very problem organisations are trying to solve. If the reason someone was hired is partly because of who they are, how they communicate, what motivates them, and how they work best with others, then surely those insights are just as relevant on day one of their employment as they were on the day the offer was made. They might even be more relevant, because now you are onboarding this person, managing them, building a relationship with them, and trying to set them up to succeed in a team with its own dynamics and pressures.
From Hire to Inspire - Introducing Obi
When we work with an organisation on a hire, by the time an offer is on the table we have built a relationship with that candidate. We understand how they are wired and what they need from their work environment. That relationship and that understanding do not have to end when someone accepts the job. In fact, we find it helps enormously when it does not. Supporting the transition from candidate to employee, helping the hiring manager understand how to onboard someone in a way that reflects who they are, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all induction, is where some of the most beneficial work happens. It is also where a lot of organisations leave value on the table, because the infrastructure to carry those insights forward has not always been there.
That is starting to change. The Predictive Index is currently rolling out Obi, and it is worth being aware of because it sits right at the centre of this conversation. Obi takes the behavioural data that already exists within PI and makes it available in the moments that matter most, from first one-to-ones and performance conversations through to coaching and feedback. Rather than those insights living in a report that gets read once, Obi puts them into the hands of the people who need them, when they need them, personalised to the specific person they are working with. It is advice grounded in the science and shaped around the individual.
I will share more on Obi as it develops and as we begin working with it more closely. For now, the point I want to leave you with is a broader one. The gap between hiring well and retaining well is often not as wide as it feels. A lot of what you need to keep someone engaged, productive, and growing in a role is already there in the data that brought them through the door. The question is whether that data gets used once or whether it becomes part of how you manage, develop, and inspire the people you have worked so hard to find.
If any of this resonates, or if you are curious about how carrying hiring insights into onboarding and development might work in practice, reply to this email and we can have a conversation about it. And if you would like to learn more about what Obi can do, I am always happy to chat.
Best of luck with your next hire.
Dave Crumby
Founder at 360 Talent Solutions | Certified PI Practitioner