The Affiliate's Guide To Hiring - Onboarding (1)
ONBOARDING
From Day 1 of a new member joining your team you should have a checklist of services, tools, documentation, etc. they get access to. This would be part 1 of your onboarding process. A simple example:
- Company email address
- LastPass
- Google Drive access
- Slack
- Asana
Voluum /Thrive /other tracker- Amazon Web Services
- Tax consultant introduction
- Account managers introduction
You can add or subtract based on what the position is and what tools you use. This is for tools and services that the new member needs to make an account for or that are commonly used from a shared account and need to explain the basic rules and use cases. You should also introduce them to all relevant contacts to do their job properly.
Part 2 of onboarding is a longer process because it involves actively training. You should have documentation available for them, explaining what they need to do; and they should be trying to use that initially but you must be available and ready to answer any questions and show them how to do it if the documentation clearly is missing some key parts.
At the same time, you should also get them used to updating the documentation and implementing the improved version themselves. You want to use this as an opportunity to both train the current candidate but also to improve your processes and procedures for the future.
Many have the impression that you hire someone and just throw them into cold water and they will solve the problem(s) you have. If you do that, it’s all too often going to cause you more problems than it solves.
What you should do is work together with this candidate to explain what you did so far and what responsibilities they take over from you. It should be a week or more (depending on the volume of tasks) of hand held training. Attention: you hold their hand and are there to help but you don’t do it instead! It might take them longer initially (think of when you did your first ever banner), but will get better over time. Never, and I mean NEVER take over a task if you really need them to do it from now on.
Another trap many fall into is micromanaging because of this hand held training period. Make sure you keep some record of improvements of the same task over time. If you have to always explain just as much as the first time on the 3rd or 4th time a similar task has to be done, it becomes a red flag, unless the task is of unusual complexity. Apply some common sense to how the learning curve should look and how questions and guiding wheels should be taken away.
If you do this properly but after a few weeks you find yourself with less free time and micromanaging the employee, then it means they are usually not a good fit. This is where a guide cannot tell you exactly what to do because sometimes it's your fault as a manager, sometimes they are not skilled, and sometimes your styles just don't fit together. It's hard to tell what is the problem - analyze and then take the necessary action, even if that means firing. That's why you have the predetermined period for employment - even the most skilled person in the world cannot work with everyone. It's simply a bad fit.
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