Onboarding
🚧 ExpandingThis topic is still in progress, but I didn’t want to leave it empty, because onboarding is where a lot of hiring effort quietly succeeds or fails. You can run the most inclusive, well-structured interview loop in the world and still lose the person in their first month if those weeks are vague, lonely, or improvised. Good onboarding is the same inclusion work — access, belonging, clarity — applied to someone who’s brand new and watching closely to learn how things really work here.
What the full version will cover:
- A structured first-week plan so day one isn’t “here’s your laptop, good luck”
- Early wins: scoping a first task that builds confidence and context
- Belonging from the start — buddies, intros, and making the implicit explicit
- 30/60/90 check-ins and what “ramped” actually looks like
💡
Write the new hire’s first two weeks down before they start — who they meet, what they read, the first small thing they’ll ship. New people are too busy orienting to chase down what they need, and the gaps in an improvised onboarding land hardest on people who don’t already know how your world works. A written plan is an access decision.
📚 Go Deeper
Books
- The Manager's Path — Camille FournierGrounded, practical guidance on bringing people onto a team and setting them up to succeed.
- The First 90 Days — Michael D. WatkinsThe transition playbook — useful for shaping a new hire's first three months, not just your own.
Tools
- GitLab Handbook — OnboardingAn open, detailed onboarding playbook, including the outsized impact of an engaged manager in week one.
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