Your new hire quit in month two: what went wrong
How to diagnose an early resignation properly, which causes repeat if you ignore them, and why reposting the same job advertisement is the costly reflex.
Seven weeks and a resignation
The person you spent six weeks recruiting has resigned in week seven. The reason given was vague and polite. You are irritated and your instinct is to repost the same advertisement and treat the whole thing as bad luck.
Sometimes it genuinely is. People take jobs and discover they have made a mistake and that happens to every employer. The question worth an hour is whether this exit was caused by something that will happen again. The same cause will produce the same result on the next hire.
What you cannot recover and what the repeat costs
None of this money comes back. A recruitment fee is usually non-refundable beyond whatever replacement window the agreement specifies and a replacement candidate is not a refund. The salary paid for seven weeks is gone. So are the onboarding hours.
The cost that matters is the second attempt. You pay the fee again. The seat stays empty for another six to ten weeks while you fill it. Someone internal continues covering the work and their own output slips. Then there is what the team now believes about hiring here.
When to investigate and when to accept it
If this is the first early exit you have had then do not rebuild your hiring process around one event. One resignation is not a pattern and redesigning a process off a single data point usually makes it longer without making it better. Have the conversation, note what you hear, and move on.
If it is the second in the same seat then the seat is the problem rather than the candidates. A role that has lost three people in two years should not be advertised again. It should be redesigned or split or contracted out. And if you are reading this hoping to buy a fix then be careful. The most common cause of a week-seven exit is a gap between the job described at offer stage and the job on the first Monday. No recruiter and no assessment tool and no onboarding programme corrects that. Spending on any of them is money spent on the wrong problem.
How to work out what actually happened
Have the exit conversation and do not have it with their manager. If the manager is part of the cause then the manager is the last person who will hear it. Ask about specifics rather than feelings. What was different from what you expected. When did you first think about leaving.
That second question is the useful one. A week-seven resignation usually reflects a decision taken around week three, which means the evidence was present early and probably visible. Go back and look at what happened in those first fortnights. Was there a promise made in the interview about scope or autonomy or a reporting line that did not survive contact with the real week. Did they raise something in week two that you deferred.
Then check the four usual causes honestly. The job was not the job advertised. The manager. A better offer they were already in process for when they accepted yours. Or something they told you early that nobody acted on. Three of those four are yours to fix.
How to judge whether you fixed it
The metric that matters is the share of hires who leave inside ninety days and whether the stated reason repeats. Two people citing unclear expectations is a finding. A second useful check is a deliberate comparison of what was promised at offer stage against what week one contained. Do it in writing for the next hire.
The metric that flatters is time to fill. Filling the seat quickly feels like recovery and a fast second hire made under pressure is how the same mistake gets repeated. The exit interview going amicably flatters in the same way. A departing employee with a notice period to serve has every reason to be gracious and no reason to be candid.
The common mistake
The reflex error is reposting the identical advertisement within the week. It feels decisive. It guarantees that whatever caused the first exit is still in place when the next person arrives, and it means the next candidate is assessed against a description you now have evidence is inaccurate.
The expense compounds rather than repeats. A second early exit in the same role costs the fee and the vacancy again, and it also costs you the willingness of good internal people to take on the cover work a third time. Teams tolerate one failed hire. By the third they begin to conclude that the role is cursed or that the management is, and neither conclusion helps you fill it.
Closing out the exit properly
The separation still has to be completed correctly even for a short tenure. Notice obligations run both ways according to the appointment letter and either side may have the option to pay in place of serving it. Full and final settlement covers unpaid salary and any accrued leave encashment that applies, with tax deducted at source on what is paid. Statutory records for provident fund and insurance need updating for the period worked and a relieving letter is ordinarily issued. A qualified professional should confirm what your obligations are for your situation rather than adapting a settlement note from a previous exit.
This guide explains how something works. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, and rules change. Confirm anything regulatory with a qualified professional before you act on it.