Grit in the Rural Economy: Unlocking the Relationship between Employee Selection and Success

Abstract

Employee turnover is costly, time consuming, and unpredictable, especially in rural economies. Experts estimate that it can cost as much as twice an employee’s salary to recruit, hire, and train a new worker. Furthermore, low unemployment and the draw of urban living continues to erode the labor pool that rural economies need to operate. The best criterion for hiring long-term employees is not competency or experience, but rather the less-observable traits of passion and perseverance. To this end, the Grit Scale—a combination of passion and perseverance—provides a widely underutilized mechanism for predicting long-term employee success. The purpose of this study was to explore the value of grit as a hiring criterion in rural economies. Participants were 100 employers from a three-county area in the Midwest United States. The results indicated that an organization’s size, location, and industry influenced its hiring process. Furthermore, the findings suggested that hiring for grit minimizes employee turnover along with the burdensome costs associated with it. Overall, this study offers insights for developing rural economies at the source of their strength: the labor pool.