Why RBTs Quit in the First 90 Days, and How to Fix It (with Dr. Jacob Bradley)

Picture a bathtub. The faucet is running full blast and the drain is wide open. You can crank the water as high as you want, and the tub never fills. That is ABA hiring. We keep turning up the faucet, posting the same job we posted three months ago, calling it "butts in seats," and nobody thinks to call a plumber and fix the drain.Fixing that drain is not one repair. It is several. And my guest today has built one of the more important ones.Dr. Jacob Bradley has a PhD in IO psychology and OBM, founded the ABA recruiting firm PsycTalent, and built a validated pre-hire tool called the Retain Assessment after hearing the same thing from CEO after CEO. We can't keep people. In this conversation he makes the case that RBT turnover is not a mystery and not the weather. It is a first 90 days problem, and once you see it that way, you know exactly where to go to work.Here is some of what we get into:Why most turnover happens in the first one to four months, and why measuring it from day one, not after training, completely changes the picture.The backfill death spiral. How "just hire faster than they leave" quietly turns nearly all of your hiring into replacing people you already lost.Hiring the right people instead of just bodies. What a pre-hire assessment can actually predict (and what it can't), and why candidates with good retention scores tend to stay two to three times as long.The real math. A conservative $5,000 per departure means losing 20 behavior technicians a month is a $1.2 million problem, before you count the families and BCBAs who leave too.RBTs are your customers. Cost to acquire versus lifetime value, and the break-even day every owner should be able to name.Why the training model sets people up to leave. Forty hours of videos, a high-stakes exam, and the basketball lesson about teaching people to actually play.How to walk into your leadership team and turn HR from a perceived cost center into the most valuable seat in the room.Jacob is bringing all of it to a free live webinar on June 23rd at 6:30 PM Eastern. It is free and live that day, and on demand for a full year if you are registered for ABA C.A.R.E.S. SHRM credit is available. Come with your hardest questions, because this is a working session, not a lecture, and Jacob loves to dig into the real ones. Everything he walks through, you can take and put to work for free on your own.Learn more at https://www.fixturnover.com and connect with Jacob on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-bradley-phdGet your full-year, on-demand access by registering for ABA C.A.R.E.S.:https://behaviorlive.com/conferences/abacares2026/registrationWe'll see you on June 23rd, and in Boston August 4th through 7th, or live streaming from the other side of the screen.