Building a remote-first culture can be incredible, but it’s not without its set of challenges. Onboarding is the first impression new hires have of your company and it’s important to get it right.
This playbook will cover the ins and outs of new hire onboarding. Good onboarding means happier new hires and faster ramp up. Let’s dive in!
Your goal in onboarding is simple: integrate new hires into your team’s culture and norms as quickly as possible. There are two principles in making this happen:
Try and get most if not all of the operational setup complete asynchronously and prior to a new joiner’s Day 1.
To be completed at least a week before the new hire starts. If you run work trials to de-risk your hiring process, then we recommend starting these activities immediately after the successful completion of a work trial.
(more detailed examples are in the resources section at the bottom of this page)
To be completed before your new hire arrives.
Help new hires understand ‘how’ you work by providing a Loom/Notion with the following:
Remote onboarding can mean it takes much longer for you to build a meaningful relationship with a new teammate. But we think Why wait until month 3 to understand if someone is a morning person or a night owl?
Candor profiles are beautiful in depth personal readmes that help new hires remove the awkwardness from early ‘get to know’ conversations by discovering and sharing how they do their best work.
If you’re looking for a way to rapidly integrate a new hire into your team and help them share how they do their best work and understand how the rest of the team do theirs then we’ve got you covered. We created Candor profiles to help teammates get to know each other in minutes not months and avoid the sometimes awkward or difficult questions about ways of working that can hold a team back from their true potential.
Candor profiles are completely free to create. Here’s how to use them to level up your onboarding and help new hires hit the ground running with their teammates:
Want to see how it works? Create your Candor profile now.
Enhanced team directory to help people connect
Customize your team directory to go beyond ‘job title’ and ‘headshot’ - here’s an example from ours:
You can encourage people to share fun facts like favorite foods, hobbies, skills they can teach, and things they are looking to learn. It’s a great way to intentionally create connection and provides common ground for some of those first early ‘get to know’ meetings.
Personalized video welcomes
The team at Loom shares personalized videos on day 1 with new hires where each team member talks about their excitement, referencing parts of the interview process they attended. This is a great way to break the ice with new team members remotely. We love how this makes each new hire feel welcome.
Here’s a collection of live examples.
The team at Trello keeps an updated kanban board of activities that gets shared with each new hire. It includes key points of contact, things to have completed in your first week and a guided virtual orientation. We love this, you can grab the template here.
Pair every new hire with someone from the team who can help guide them through those early weeks and be a soundboard for any ‘silly’ (there are no silly) questions! This person’s job is twofold:
There are many virtual games you can play with new team members to add a fun element to their onboarding while also helping everyone get to know each other better. One great option is Two Truths and a Lie but there are countless Zoom-friendly games you can play with your new team member.
Here’s a collection of remote onboarding resources we love:
Twist’s remote onboarding guide
Evolution of Buffer’s onboarding process
Memo bank’s onboarding checklist
Notion’s onboarding guide and template for startups
360 Learning’s remote onboarding steps
Candor makes it easy to connect and have fun with your teammates, even while you’re remote. Use Candor to do feedback, shoutouts, check-ins, and more, all in one place.
