Is a new employee who gave up on the company after only three days “a ton of demos”?

It is June, and many new employees have probably finished their training and started working at their new workplace. Among them, what is increasing every year is the number of new employees who quit their companies within three months of entering the workforce as new graduates. In recent years, the media has been talking about a situation in which there is no end to the number of people who use resignation and resignation agencies, known as “resignation agency services.

In these days of labor shortages and a seller’s market, we wonder what these new hires who gave up on their companies early were thinking when they resigned. We interviewed people who had actually quit less than a month after joining a company.

Did you dislike the company culture that values autonomy?

Mr. A, who graduated from Waseda University two years ago, started working for a major IT company. Although unlisted, it is a well-known mega-venture company. The reason he left was because of his experience in the training program.

He says, “My job search ended quickly, and I chose the company that seemed to treat me the best among them and joined them. There was nothing in particular that I was looking for in a company. I decided to join the company because it seemed like an ‘interesting’ business and it was a company that I knew,” Mr. A said.

Mr. A decided to leave the company 10 days after joining. His final date of resignation was the end of April.

During my training, the first thing we did was to do sales at the call center. Each group was to present their performance and compete with their peers in a friendly competition. It wasn’t tough, but I got tired of thinking, ‘Will I continue to be evaluated based on my performance?

In addition, there were people who said outlandish things in order to be evaluated by the personnel, or to put it another way, ‘more meaningless work,’ and I couldn’t stand the thought of having to deal with them for a long time to come, so I decided to resign.

The work environment was also different from what Mr. A was looking for.

What I was looking for was a workplace where all I had to do was follow the instructions of my boss. The company valued autonomy, where employees could propose their own work ideas and take action, and I didn’t feel comfortable in that way. The compensation and benefits were good, so I felt it was a shame. But during the training, one of the executives told me that speed is more important than quality when you are young, so I followed his advice and quit without thinking about the future. I have no regrets.

A corporate culture that “values the autonomy” of employees is not a bad thing. It is often heard that many people leave a company because the work environment does not “allow them to hone the skills they want to do and build a career,” but Ms. A’s case is the exact opposite. I also think that being “evaluated based on performance” is not only common in for-profit companies, but also in government employees and non-profit organizations. ……

Didn’t like your “sparkly” peers?

Mr. T also had to quit his job in advertising after two weeks, which he had entered after graduating. He graduated from Hosei University and entered the industry he had aspired to work in, but he decided to quit within three days.

He said, “Rather than saying, ‘I got my wish and joined ……,’ I joined this company because it was the closest to the job I had aspired to out of all the companies that offered me job offers.” To my surprise, when the training started after the induction ceremony, a group had already been formed. Apparently we were connected through Facebook or some other social networking service, and my classmates, who were talking amicably in close proximity, were already talking about plans for drinking parties, etc., so I felt alienated from my first day at the company” (Mr. T).

I knew the industry was glittering, but I didn’t expect it to be this glittering,” said Mr. T., feeling uneasy about the future. The training seemed to make his sense of uneasiness even stronger.

On the third day of the training, I was with my classmates at lunchtime. On the third day of training, I had lunch with some of my peers. There, all of them talked about how they were ‘strong drinkers’ and how they ‘played hard during their college days,’ and told saga stories that I didn’t really understand. All they talked about were things that should be finished while they were still students, which made me feel even more strongly that I did not want to work with such people.

Mr. T quit early because he did not feel comfortable at a company where the so-called “student atmosphere” was still present. Later, he was able to change jobs with a major company in the same industry. His current company seems to be more comfortable in his skin, but it was an unexpected environment.

It is a bigger company than the one I left,” he said. It is a bigger company than the one I left. It has an old corporate culture that you have to have spirit and perseverance to overcome, and there was a boss who made unreasonable demands of me. The work is tough, but as long as you do your job, nothing is said. My boss also has a kind side, such as when it rains, he tells me, ‘The weather is bad, so you should work at home. All the meals he takes me out to after work are paid for with his own expense account. It’s an old-fashioned workplace that might be called “Showa-era,” but for me, it’s much easier to work here.

It seems impossible that someone would quit a company so soon after joining it because they “don’t get along with their peers. However, in Mr. T’s case, it may be the right decision for him, considering the fact that thanks to his early decision, he is now able to work at a workplace that suits him as a result.

Many reasons for resignation are related to “human relations

Albatross, Inc., which operates the resignation agency “Momuri,” conducted a survey on the use of resignation agencies by new graduates in FY2012. The most common reason given by those who resigned between April and June was “discrepancy between the contract and working conditions before joining the company” accounting for nearly half of the respondents. The next most common reasons were “human relations such as bullying and power harassment” and “mental and physical reasons. We asked about trends in the number of users this year.

This year we had 487 users in April, 350 in May, and 38 in June as of the 4th. As for the trend of reasons for leaving, this year, many of them are related to ‘human relations. It depends solely on how the person perceives it, but it includes those classified as bullying or power harassment, such as ‘I was given a high-handed attitude,’ ‘I was ignored when I greeted people,’ ‘I was harassed,’ and ‘I didn’t fit the atmosphere of the workplace. The other party is a supervisor or a senior employee, and it is rare to find a case like Ms. T’s where it is a peer,” said Mr. Shinji Oyama of Albatross Inc.

However, it is not too early to say that you should give up on a job after a month or two.

It is true that you need to be patient at first in order to build a relationship. But nowadays people are quickly getting information about other people’s working environment through social networking sites. I think they compare themselves with others, so they are making decisions more quickly.”

It seems that more and more newcomers will continue to quit due to the inspiration of “it doesn’t fit” or “it’s not what I thought it would be. Perhaps we, as supervisors and senior workers, need to update ourselves in various ways in order to adapt to them.