View from the Build — How we built a cohort of tech recruiters: onboarding

This is a continuation from managing emotions.

5. Real people who trust us.

It’s here!

We’re officially beyond an idea. Real people are here who trust us to deliver on what we’ve promised.

All onboarding should have three main goals:

Week one for us was a success on values & connection. I think it was too much information.

Every quarter, we fly everyone in and spend 2–3 days reviewing the previous quarter, goal setting for the next one, and building up trust and memories. This is the perfect introduction for relationship building & everyone was able to hear our values on repeat.

Here’s a real view of the schedule at a high level:

The highlights:

• We LOVE user manuals for onboarding. Inspired by this one from Pete Vowles. We first share our own candid answers (this is critical for this to work) and then ask for the following from every new hire. We store them all in a shared drive and everyone is encouraged when new, collaborating, or disagreeing to revisit them.

What are some honest, unfiltered things about you?

What drives you nuts?

What are your quirks?

What are some things that people might misunderstand about you that you should clarify?

What are you working on improving?

• This group is delightful! I saw people having real conversations beyond just small talk. The diversity of thought, experience, background, and style we wanted is so clear and rich. It’s adding so much depth to our team already.

The lowlights:

• We managed to both over and under index on useful information this week. We tried to introduce a few tools including our Applicant Tracking System, Slack, and a few other smaller ones at a high level. Then we planned to roll out others over the coming weeks. We received clear feedback that people would have preferred an overview of the broader suite of tools to start. We also had tool specific training followed by three days of revelry. I can’t imagine that was well set up for recall on the technical info. Next time —we’ll give maybe a suite overview at most in that first week.
• People were anxious to have their plans well in advance of their start date. This is out of excitement and is a delightful sign for engagement. For a variety of reasons, we were making last minute changes until the last minutes before they started. I’d like for new people to have their schedule at least a week in advance.

How I’m feeling at this stage: optimistic!

What’s next: teaching people things!