Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of job embeddedness, professionalism, and recruiters on turnover of R&D professionals. The data was collected from a sample of 132 R&D professionals with PhD degrees in engineering or natural science in a Korean electronics firm. To analyze time-dependent turnover data, Cox’s proportional hazards model was used. The results showed that over the 5~7 year period after their organization entry, R&D professionals with high professionalism were more likely to leave the organization than were their counterparts with low level of professionalism. And Professionals who had negative interaction with recruiters were more likely to leave the organization than those who had positive interaction with recruiters. This study suggested that the quality of interaction with recruiter have a significant impact on the job withdrawal behavior(e.g. turnover) as well as on the job choice decision during job search among professionals. Based on these results above, implications and limitations of this research were presented, and also directions for future investigation were suggested.