My first day at my first job was kind of a shit show (pardon my French.) 

The agency had ordered me a new desktop PC, but it hadn’t arrived yet. So I had to hot seat (literally) with another employee and could only use his machine when he went out for meetings. My training didn’t amount to much, and my early days were filled with make-work and minor tasks until they could find the time to orient me properly. 

This is an example of what you should not do when onboarding new marketers (or any employee, really.) Yet it happens way more often than it should. 88% of employees think their employer botched the onboarding process, and I know mine did. 

Poor onboarding isn’t a harmless issue. It costs the business, and it costs a lot. Companies in the U.S. and U.K. spend an estimated $37 billion just to keep unproductive employees who don’t understand their job. 

More importantly, proper onboarding helps you as a marketing manager. According to the Society for Human Resources Management, new hires who go through standardized onboarding are 50% more productive right out of the gate. 

Sounds good, right? So how can you get some of that onboarding magic going in your team? Especially when you haven’t ever done it before?

Read on, fair reader. Read on.

Start before their first day

Your relationship with your new hire doesn`t start on their first official day at the office; it starts the moment they accept your offer. Give them things to do well before their start date.

Now, you might think you’re taking advantage of your new hire and asking them to do unpaid work. But I view it as an extension of a candidate researching you before an interview. They don’t have to, but the best hires will do it because they know it’s smart to be prepared. 

Other companies agree with this outlook. According to Aberdeen, best-in-class companies are 35% more likely to begin onboarding before day one. 

Prep can take multiple forms. You can have them do background research on the product they’ll be marketing or read your company manual. It can be reading the company blog or going through the library of videos. As long as it equips them better for their upcoming task. 

Have everything ready the first day

I’ve seen a lot of LinkedIn posts where new hires receive oodles of swag on their first day. All that stuff is definitely exciting and an extremely shareable moment, but you don’t have to go that far yourself (especially if you don’t have any swag to share).

Just focus on making sure the employee has the essentials:

• A computer (and the password for it)
• A desk of their own (that’s not in the kitchen)
• Wifi password
• Email address

Those 4 items are mere table stakes. And yet so many managers are caught with their pants down when the new hire walks in the door, as if it was a surprise inspection or something! It boggles the mind.

Share personal/team goals and expectations

One of the biggest things I hated about starting my first job was how lost I felt. Asides from broad strokes (manage my own accounts once I’m onboarded), I had no idea what to expect, or what was expected of me. I was new to everything–the company, the industry, and even life as an employee. 

My supervisor, bless her heart, was awesome and tried her best, but she was too busy with her own duties to spend much time with me. 

One-on-one time with the direct manager is the most important part of onboarding and so you have to be ready and willing to give as much of your time as physically possible to your new hire. 

Use this time to share your team’s goals and your expectations for what the new hire will accomplish in their first few months. Have the newbie share their personal and professional goals with you as well. You’ll be able to better manage and motivate if you know what excites them (professionally).  

Appoint a New Hire Buddy

Being there for your new hire is important, but despite what I said above, you can’t be there for them all the time. 

A new hire buddy, on the other hand, will be able to show them everything from the company intranet to using Marketo to the best places to have lunch. They’ll be able to use job shadowing to speed up the new hire’s proficiency. 

The actual length of the buddy relationship can be anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on how complicated the job is. But if it goes right, the new hire will have a new friend/mentor who can guide them for their entire stay on your team. 

Do the rounds of the company

Give your new hire a list of people to meet 1 on 1 in their first few weeks. This list should be composed of people from different teams. This isn’t a simple getting-to-know-you session; it’s also so they can see how the different teams work together. 

This is valuable for people who work in content marketing, so that they can get introduced to the internal resources who can help them with their projects– especially for anything involving product details or customer insights. 

But don’t just point the new hire at them and say “go!” As the manager, you have to be the one to “recruit” the people on the list to make sure they’re willing to talk. 

Make resources easily available

Company handbooks, reference materials and marketing assets should all be easily available to your new hire. If they’re not, they’ll be pestering you and everyone around them for weeks.

Solutions like SharePoint and Soaq.co are good dedicated solutions for hosting all of these materials, but you can also get away with using One Drive, Dropbox or even a shared folder on your server. 

How can you tell if your new hire is growing into the role? By feel? Anecdotal evidence? A progress bar floating atop their head?

Written curriculum with learning milestones and KPIs

60% of companies fail to set milestones or goals for their new hires, which can result in stunted or slow professional development and reduced productivity. 

Set reasonable milestones for your employee based on job proficiency or metrics. For example, you might set something like this for a new content marketer:

• 2 weeks: Upload first new post in Hubspot
• 1 month: Create and publish first drip campaign in Marketo
• 2 month: Take over blog and email campaign management

Your goals should also have KPIs that tell you how well they’re doing those tasks. Social media roles could be measured in engagement, while PPC roles would be based on conversions. Keep these expectations reasonable and scale up the difficulty as time progresses and the new hire improves.

Have them audit what they’re managing

This is a fantastic exercise that will show you what your new hire is capable of. Yes, something similar could’ve been done in the interview, but if you do it now, they will have greater access to the materials, metrics and manpower that they wouldn’t have had as a candidate–which means a more accurate and useful audit. 

Have them present their new findings to the team and conduct an open discussion. Which findings were correct? Which ones were wrong? Why were they wrong? Do you agree with the proposed action items? How does this affect the company marketing playbook?

This also helps the team see the new hire as more than fresh meat. They are a living, breathing and thinking part of the company now, and will be able to help if given the chance. 

So basically…

Onboarding is more than just an email address and a welcome kit. It’s paving the way for your employee to succeed in your organization. The faster they get good at the job, the faster their responsibilities are taken off your plate. You are helping them make your life easier. 

Go forth and onboard!

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