You have found the perfect candidate with the right blend of talents, skills, and experience. You have reviewed their assessment with a talent analyst and know what to expect.
It’s time to have them hired and jumping right in, right?
Not so fast. Now it’s the time to take those talents and create an onboarding plan customized to your new hire.
Own Their Strengths
As a leader, it’s important to realize that you must “own” the strengths of all of your direct reports.
Their strengths give them the potential to be great at a job, but intense strengths can also trip them up.
So, as you are creating an onboarding plan, look at those strengths and think about how you can use those strengths to help them onboard successfully while avoiding obstacles.
1. Strong Drives and Values
This group needs to measure themselves and feel a sense of accomplishment, of winning, at the end of each day.
Give clear goals and cheer them on. But realize that they will be hard on themselves. They may constantly think they are not doing enough, achieving enough, winning enough, and become frustrated.
So, during onboarding and beyond, set clear goals, define good vs. great in this role, and discuss the steps they will need to be successful.
2. Strong Work Styles
This group is motivated by hard work and keeping everything in its place. They think about work on their days off and need to have a plan. But they may have a hard time leaving work and may struggle to say no to extra work.
So, during onboarding and beyond, set clear priorities, guidelines, timelines, and deadlines. Discuss the next steps opening and regularly so they feel a sense of control in their work.
3. Strong People Acumen
This group is focused on a positive culture and strong personalized relationships with others in the office and with clients. They may crave social interaction at work. So, ensure there is time during onboarding to meet and get to know everyone on the team.
Assign them a work buddy to be their person for help and questions. Prioritize conducting a Growth Guide with them to learn their needs professionally and personally.
4. Strong Influence Themes
This group likes to take charge. They can get their clients moving in the right direction and get the close. They are assertive and confident.
During onboarding, give them ways to win and build their confidence from the beginning. Find out what makes them feel like an authority, and clients should listen to them. Then, make sure they feel prepared to take charge.
Discuss possible objections and conversation stoppers and how to overcome those. The more prepared they are, the more confident they will likely be.
5. Strong Thought Process
This group enjoys researching and finding well-thought-out solutions. They are smart. They may onboard more quickly than you anticipated, so be prepared.
During onboarding, discuss their learning style. Are they hands-on? Do they need to see, hear, or read learning materials and structure onboarding accordingly?
They tend to get bored a little easier, so structure onboarding in a way that keeps them engaged.
Work Around their Weakness
As a leader, you will also be owning the weaknesses of those who report directly to you. If you have similar weaknesses, you may have found ways to work around these that you can share. But if these are areas of strength for you, then it can be harder.
You may find it easy to be competitive, organized, or creative, but you may struggle to understand why this is so difficult.
First, think about how you can help. That may seem easy, but at times, it’s hard to put our own strengths into words. I’m highly organized, but “my schedule just speaks to me and tells me where things belong” is not the least bit helpful to someone else.
So, consider the new hire’s softer talents and review your pre-hire feedback notes. What are some ideas to motivate them, help them keep control of their day and clients, view things more positively, or develop more confidence?
Second, consider how onboarding will be more challenging with these weaknesses. Soft learners won’t catch on to processes as quickly, so they should be encouraged to take notes and create checklists.
They may rush through onboarding but struggle to concentrate on building redundancies into your plan. Each weakness will need specific workarounds for a new hire’s onboarding and work life to be successful.
Create a Strong Relationship on Their Terms
Some new hires crave strong work relationships. They may have created lifelong friends at previous jobs and look to do the same at their new jobs. Others are more introverted and prefer friendly acquaintances to close, intimate friendships.
Based on the strength of their relationship talent, is your new hire more likely to want close friends or friendly acquaintances?
Once again, the Growth Guide is an invaluable resource for finding out how close a relationship they crave with coworkers and leaders.
If they rank relationships as a high priority, set up meetings early on with various people and departments so they can start creating bonds. If they are not strong in relationships, ease them in slowly.
Keep meet and greets to smaller groups, maybe just their direct teammates or part of the team. Slowly add in more people so as not to overwhelm them. It might be helpful to set a goal of meeting a certain number of new people each week during onboarding until they have finally met everyone that they are likely to interact with.
Your new hire’s talent assessment is the instruction manual, and pre-hire feedback is your cheat sheet for onboarding. Use both to create an onboarding plan that will lead your new hire to success.
