I’m sure you’ve found an amazing candidate — passionate, knowledgable and keen to get started (they may have even already read How to Optimise their first 30 days). You’re going to be onboarding them by supporting them on their first steps in the company.
Onboarding a new joiner is not something to be taken on lightly. Whether you’re their manager or an onboarding buddy, your new joiner is going to be onboarding for around three months. This time will vary between individuals but it is, in my experience, a reasonable timeline to get operational Product Managers (that is, those in the day-to-day of owning a Product) to be independent and productive.
This is not to suggest you will need to provide the same level of support during those 3 months. As the new joiner learns more about the company, the role and the product they will become increasingly independent and able to operate autonomously. Don’t imagine the three months of onboarding equates to them sat reading documentation. They will be able to steadily increase their ability to contribute over this time taking on more of the challenges of the role.
In this article I explore this approach in the context of Onboarding Product Managers, however, the structure should also work in Engineering, Product Design and Analytics with only a small amount of change. This article is usable if you’re the direct line manager of the new joiner or an onboarding buddy (I’ve used it in both contexts.)
There are a 6 areas I focus on when onboarding a new team member:
This 6 areas provide a broad skeleton designed to get your new joiner up to speed as quickly as possible. I’ll explore each of the topics in more detail below. You will also find an Onboarding Checklist Spreadsheet based on these tips at the end of the article.
Work through the basic administrative tasks — has HR got all the details they need? Bank account, tax and insurance information and emergency contact details. A new job can be stressful and overwhelming. You don’t want to add to that in the first month when they find they’ve been overtaxed or haven’t been paid because a form was overlooked.