We've talked about hiring the right people for your team, but what does it take to ensure your new hires are successful within your organization?
TriNet outlines some steps your organization can take to ensure a successful hiring process and it's good to give those a quick read to ensure you're finding the right candidates and vetting those candidates properly.
Just as important as the process for finding good candidates is the process for onboarding new hires. After all, the onboarding phase is really just a continuation of the interview process. Just as you're evaluating a candidate's skill set in their new role, candidates are evaluating how well your organization welcomes them to the team.
Here are Olark, we continue to refine and improve on our onboarding process. Through our experiences over the years, we've found no matter the position, or the experience of the person being hired, there are three essential parts of the onboarding process:
If you don't have 2 minutes for the audio interview, here's a quick overview:
1. Clear & Concise Processes
All parties on the onboarding team should know what is expected of them and when it needs to be completed. There should be clear schedules and checklists provided BEFORE the new hire even starts.
Transparency goes both ways. Make sure new hires also know what is expected of them BEFORE and DURING the onboarding process. Don’t leave a new hire in a corner by themselves with a stack of manuals. They should feel part of the process, not an outsider.
Remember: The first week at a company is the first impression new hires get when they arrive. You want them to think, "Yes, I made a good decision."
2. Pair Them Up
New hires should have a designated point of contact for every phase of the onboarding process.
Here at Olark we do All Hands Support and every person, no matter, their role, does customer support (CS). So, in addition to new hires having their role specific lead who trains them for their main job, they also have a CS training lead.
The CS training lead gets them set up with multiple members of the CS team to train and also ride along during their chat shifts. Eventually we take the training wheels off and send them out to support our customers.
However, just because training is done doesn’t mean we stop helping. We keep a Slack channel designated to ask questions during chat shifts and provide a wealth of documentation as well as videos.
3. Make It Human
Nothing is worse than feeling like you’re a cog in a machine. Help new hires connect with others within your company so it's not just them and their computer.
This is especially true for customer support new hires because support and service is a team effort. Helping new hires on the support team feel part of something bigger than themselves is what separates stellar customer support teams from mediocre teams, especially when crunch-time hits.
At the end of the day, your customers want a human connection, so why shouldn’t you do the same for your new hires?
