Matt Vaadi argues that experienced hires still need structured onboarding. He recommends setting 12-month outcome goals, then working backward to define skill milestones at 30, 60, 90 days, and 6 months. This approach reduces the risk of bad hires and gets new employees productive faster.
Many small businesses expect that if they hire somebody with the experience, they're just going to come in, hit the ground running, and they're not going to have to train them or babysit them hardly at all. Well, that would be awesome, but that is never the case. It is incredibly rare for somebody to come in and be productive in the first 90 days without a regimented and formal training program and onboarding program. That's why onboarding is absolutely critical. You're going to want to make sure again, now, if I've gone to these outcomes 12 months from now that I know this individual needs to be able to achieve to be successful, I can turn around and back into what's my training program to get there. Again, I've, I've got those 3 outcomes. Now I know in order to be able to achieve those things at 12 months, I need to be able to do this at 6 months, this at 90 days, this at 60 days, this at 30 days. Now I can train to make sure that this individual is set up for success and I can avoid bad hires by making sure I'm setting people up in an environment for success.
