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Onboarding programs rank high on the list of HR programs that get little respect or attention. When managed well, onboarding programs can have a dramatic and measurable impact on employee productivity, retention, employment brand, service/product quality, workplace safety, and future hiring success.

Unfortunately, most onboarding programs are poorly designed and even more poorly executed. After years of researching and advising firms on developing best-practice programs, I have found that there are 15 key factors that can literally kill any chances of onboarding programs demonstrating a positive impact.

The Root of the Problem

Most corporate onboarding programs are designed from the HR administrator’s perspective. The goal and focus is to ease the administrative burden on HR and to drive compliance activities, not to ensure that new hires can reach expected levels of productivity in the shortest time frame possible.

As a result, most programs have boiled onboarding activities down to all but the bare bones of administration. Every new hire, transfer, or merged/acquired employee gets the same information, on the same timeline, via the same channel.

Doing so has made administering onboarding easy, cheap, generic, consistent, and utterly useless. The result is that most onboarding programs frustrate new hires and hiring managers.

While the concept behind onboarding is truly simple, delivering world-class onboarding is anything but easy and generic. If your current approach demonstrates any of the 15 onboarding program killers described below, you’re missing the mark and need to start over:

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Decision-making can be a daunting challenge, especially when faced with pressure to cut costs and reorganize in a challenging economy. As recruiters, you are presented with a myriad of tools, services, and processes to choose from and the list keeps growing and growing! I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your toughest decisions with us every day on the ERE discussion boards. I learn such valuable information from you!

Twittering for Sourcing
We see it used at conferences. We read about it on our discussion boards. We might even be active “Tweeters” ourselves … but how effective is Twitter for sourcing and recruiting? Erika Hanson Brown recently joined the Twitter community and wants to know how it works in the recruiting world. John Kennedy is skeptical about Twitter. Although it can help save time when learning about a potential candidate, John relies on some advice he received years ago, “there are only three true productive tools in recruiting — the pen, the pad of paper, and the telephone.”

After reading several more responses to Erika, it is clear that John is in the minority. Twitter can be an effective tool if you follow the advice of Kelly Dingee and Mark Tortorici including search strings, and tying together SMS and social networking sites. If anyone is interested, you can check out Dennis Smith’s presentation on the Recruiting Road Show and tune in to ERE’s webinar series on November 5 for some tips and advice from Geoff Peterson.

ATS Wish List
Erica McNally wants to know what are your “must-haves” and your “nice-to-haves” when selecting your ATS. What’s on your “wish list”? Jake Stupak lists the following: scheduling for multi-users, resume parsing, email tracking, and candidate and position matching. Sylvia Dahlby astutely advises to identify your unique business requirements first. “The leading apps all have the basics” — think about what your company needs before creating your list. She recommends CareerXroads and HRchitect for additional information. (HRchitect, by the way, is doing a workshop in San Diego at ERE’s conference on “How to Save Your Current ATS and Get a Return on Your Investment.”)

I have to add The Newman Group (who will also be doing a session on HR systems at the Spring Expo) to that list since it has a wealth of knowledge in this arena. Dorothy Beach, unhappy with Vurv, has been very impressed with Avature’s Recruiting CRM tool as an ATS option. (I also sat on a demo last week with Michael Johnson and agree that it is worth checking out.) This makes me wonder…will CRM tools replace traditional ATS tools? What do you think? Would you take the leap?

Onboarding New Hires and The Buddy System
There are several programs that if implemented correctly can make onboarding strategies successful. Based on research and discussions, many companies would include the “buddy system” on that list. Laura Arnold is very interested in a program that would pair an internal employee with a new hire but wants a new name for “the buddy system.” Apparently, Laura is not alone. Several respondents use a variety of different names, including “Mentor Program.” Bryan Chaney also recommends “Internal Career Counselor” and “Coworker Coach” while Joann Robinson has used “New Hire Partner,” “Orientation Partner” and “Orientation Coach.”

I’m interested in knowing if any companies have been able to measure the success of their onboarding programs, more specifically the concept of a “mentor program.” Todd Raphael has an in-depth look at onboarding in the next Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

JobFox or Net-Temps?

Kathleen Coughlin wants to add a new job board to her list. Can anyone recommend JobFox or Net-Temps? Although Kathleen did not receive feedback on Net-Temps, JobFox (often considered the eHarmony of recruiting) has some work to do. Taryn Pfalzgraf has been satisfied with the customer service but feels that the process is too time-consuming. She recommends a “conditional trial membership” or “waiting a few months to see if they’ve ironed out their problems.” Kimberley Joyce would have to agree. As an Oracle-centric company, she was reassured that JobFox could meet her companies’ needs. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Among other complaints, they are unable to add different tools, languages, and functionality. Given this negative feedback, Eden Shaffer encourages Kathleen to consider Search Engine Marketing instead. What do you think?

Hiring a Virtual Recruiter/Sourcer and Unethical Competitors
These topics continue to dominate the discussion boards. We’d love to hear what you think about these critical and timely recruiting issues…

In slow times, onboarding takes on new importance. It’s the best way to ensure that those people you have spent so much time attracting and wooing decide to stay with you.

Organizations are devoting more time to the onboarding process and employing more creative and exciting techniques in an effort to get their newly hired employees productive sooner and to lay a foundation that will help retain them.

In fact, employees who have gone through some sort of onboarding process above and beyond the usual process of filling out paperwork and choosing benefit plans report feeling better connected to their colleagues and to the company culture. This translates into a loyalty that keeps employees from turning down offers that tempt by simply offering more dollars.

There are at least three reasons that orientation or assimilation programs are becoming popular.

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In my last article on onboarding, titled “Your Onboarding Program Needs A Pair Of Fresh Eyes,” I shared a rather humbling personal experience. In the article, I described the mistake I made that was analogous to the one many employers make in their employee orientation and onboarding processes:

They forget to examine their orientation and onboarding process from the perspective of their new employees.

This creates two problems for employers interested in creating an onboarding process that leads to maximum employee retention and engagement:

1. They don’t realize the negative perceptions they inadvertently create through mindlessness — perceptions that can lead to employee retention problems or diminished engagement.
2. They forget how confusing, complex, and daunting things look to someone without institutional knowledge of “how things are done around here.” Because of this, processes that might seem obvious and easy to navigate if you’re an “old pro,” are anything but to the newcomer. Thus, they inadvertently dampen the new employee’s enthusiasm by adding unnecessary frustration and anxiety.

This is why you must borrow the “fresh eyes” of your new employees. They can see things you can’t.

I was reminded of this — and the impact of careless orientation and onboarding — by an interview I did recently with a former college senior, who, as part of a business class, participated in a bank’s orientation program. Here are some of his observations, along with a bit of commentary.

Since he requested anonymity, I will refer to him as “Brandon” as I share his observations.

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Last week I posted a summary of the most relevant, thought-provoking discussions of the week, and after hearing from several of you, I thought I would make this a weekly tradition. I picked out six of the top discussions and wanted to ask what you think #7 should be. What discussion should I add to the list? Let me know what you think by posting a comment below.

Preventing Applicants from Bypassing HR. The shaky relationship between the recruiter and hiring manager has always been an interesting topic of debate on ERE discussion boards.

Coral Blankenship wants to know if there is a “diplomatic way to inform candidates in a posting not to contact the hiring manager or any other person other than the representative listed in the posting.”

Amanda Blazo and Rob Levin were realistic, saying that unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to prevent someone from contacting a hiring manager, especially with the amount of information available through the Internet.

Amanda advises corporate recruiters and TPRs to respond to every applicant “qualified or not” and Rob added that many people pass over HR because “they know it will get them nowhere.” Mike Johnson included some helpful language to include in job postings while Jeff Altman wrote about the benefits an applicant might see in going directly to HR and included an example. He also sympathized with Coral’s situation since he agreed that most applicants can’t do an “adequate job of presenting themselves on a call.”

Monday’s Question of the Day. Work/life balance has become part of our everyday vernacular. We hear about it on the news, read about it in studies, and discuss it during interviews, but I couldn’t help wondering: Do most companies really want their employees to balance both and possibly leave work early for dinner plans and yoga classes? Elizabeth DeLouise feels that “It still seems the person who is willing to put in the longer hours are the people who get ahead.” David Rees questions the phrase “work/life balance” and asks, “does that mean that work is not part of life?” He also believes that work-life balance does not affect TPRs as much, since they are “evaluated on effectiveness not hours worked”? Anyone disagree? I wonder if work-life balance is truly a question about generational differences. Is this workplace philosophy accepted for younger generations and not Boomers? Maureen Sharib included some interesting data from a Monster survey conducted in 2007 that you might want to check out.

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My friend was released after just 20 days on the job.

She was given work assignments to complete that had never been discussed in the interview. At her exit interview, her manager admitted he had overestimated her technical skills in the interview. She had not professed extensive technical skills in the interview. She was given no notice that she was to be terminated, just asked to come to the conference room at 3 pm on what turned out to be her last day.

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Do you know the impact your onboarding program has on your new employees, moment-of-truth by moment-of-truth?

Do you know what it’s like to experience your company as an employee on the first day of work? The first week? What about the week prior to that first day?

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At the recent onboarding conference I spoke at in Atlanta, I had the opportunity to listen to some great examples of companies that get concepts such as “It’s About the Experience” and “What’s The Emotional Take Away?”

At the conference, Diana Oreck, vice president of Ritz-Carlton’s Global Learning & Leadership Center, shared how their employee orientation program and onboarding process welcomes and inspires their new hires. She also talked about the mindset that informs how they design the experiences they deliver.

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It’s a great day at Newman Industries! For the last month, it has been actively recruiting a hot candidate to join its sales team. Today, Steven Harmon agreed to join. Newman sees him as a true rainmaker. The recruiter and sales manager share high-fives. Mission accomplished! Spike the ball in the end zone. The job is done! The competition was fierce for Steven, but Newman Industries won.

While Newman Industries was celebrating, Steven resigned his position with his present employer and enjoyed a celebratory dinner with his wife. That night, Steven lay in bed wondering if he made the right decision. He came to terms with his decision and looks forward to his first day at the company.

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A poor onboarding strategy will inevitably cost a company the energy, resources and time spent during the pre-hire stages. This story is so familiar that 38% of companies admit to losing employees due to a weak onboarding process. Even more discouraging, 38% of companies do not know if they have lost employees due to a weak onboarding process according to an ERE Media survey.

Moving into a new position of leadership is one of the toughest challenges people face. Nearly half of new leaders fail in their first eighteen months. Often, failure is the result of crucial mistakes made in the very beginning. Critical mistakes made so early can be devastating for companies and leaders alike. But how can organizations and new leaders avoid them?

Learn how new leaders can take charge, build their teams, and get great results in new roles faster than anyone thought possible. This is important because of the time value of accelerated performance and because delivering better results faster is the best way to reduce the risk of failure in a new leadership role. This webinar focuses on how to manage onboarding as a process with discrete steps, invest in pre-boarding preparation before the start, and the need to focus on accelerating team performance after the pivot point of day one.

If you’re serious about upgrading your new-hire orientation program and onboarding process as a whole, here are 13 questions you need to ask. Ask them of yourself, your HR department, your management team, your frontline supervisors, and most important, your new employees.

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This article originally appeared January 17, 2007.

Agency folks tend to see the corporate world as bureaucratic and slow to make decisions; more specifically, they see most corporate recruiters as lacking the requisite skills and bare-knuckle tactics required to make things happen.

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This checklist continues last week’s article about comparing your onboarding program against the design components of a “world-class” onboarding program.

Part 3: Operational Design Components

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World-class is a term that is often used and misused by those in human resources. It’s important to realize upfront that good or even very good onboarding programs are quite common, but they are also quite different from the few existing “world-class” programs.

Almost by definition, the number of world-class programs in any field is extremely small. For example, to be considered as world-class in an Olympic sport, you must win a gold, silver, or bronze medal. Such an achievement is truly unique and the winners of this world-class status always number below one-half of 1% of the total number of participants in the sport.

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A study unveiled by IBM and the American Society for Training & Development reveals that only 16% of organizations have prioritized workforce demographic issues in company education initiatives.

The study says too few organizations have taken action to meet the challenges, either by addressing the retirement of Baby Boomers, or streamlining the learning curve for new employees.

However, there are steps that you, not to mention the remaining 84%, can take to reverse this trend. ?

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Because retaining people is more challenging now, it’s time to look beyond traditional new employee programs and focus on providing new hires with not just the tools but the skills to help them succeed in their new workplace. The majority of new hire on-boarding and orientation programs focus on providing new hires with high-level information about the company, rules, policy, and procedures. Some companies go the extra step by providing their new employees with tools to help them navigate their new work environment; new-hire checklists are popular items in this genre, but that’s not enough.

But today’s savvy Gen X and Y employees (the bulk of whom you’re hiring) quickly need confirmation from their new employers that they made the right choice. Throwing them into the fray to see what happens can no longer be the litmus test for determining new employee fit. What new employees really need are the skills to quickly succeed in their new jobs and build platforms for continued success. Here’s a look at five critical skills that support immediate and long-term employee success. You might think that some of these are basic or common-sense. That may be true, but my experience is that most companies aren’t doing them.

Goal-Setting Skills

To prepare new employees for success, you must ensure that they know what is expected of them and how success is defined. Once your new employee is clear on his objectives, he can begin to identify goals that align with the company, project, and his personal objectives. Help your new employees define six- and 12-month objectives so that they have a roadmap and clear direction. As part of this process, make sure their goals are realistic and milestones are identified. Milestones are critical to ensure they are on track to success, and they provide valuable check-points for managers. When helping your new employees set goals, remember the following:

• Set goals that are realistic and provide a challenge.

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How people are treated when they join your organization determines whether they become productive quickly, whether they become engaged and participate in decisions and innovation, and how long they stay with your firm. Most large organizations do a fair job at giving new employees the basics. They teach them how to access the email systems, use voice mail, get office supplies, and so forth. But in conversations with many (ex) employees of smaller firms I find that not even this is organized in any formal way. Mostly new hires learn by asking others, as well as by trial-and-error. Even rarer is the new hire who gets a thorough grounding in what the company is all about, who’s who, and what’s really what. Giving them that can make all the difference.

In many of the organizations who win the best-place-to-work-in-America awards, orientation, assimilation, or induction programs play a major role in getting new employees up to speed quickly and in adding months and years to retention. In fact, employees who have gone through some sort of assimilation process — one that is more than the usual paper-processing administrivia — report feeling better connected to corporate strategy and to the company culture. This translates years later into a loyalty that keeps the employee and makes it easier for them to turn down tempting offers that simply offer more dollars. There at least three reasons that orientation or assimilation programs are necessary. First of all, they help new hires feel that they are part of a larger organization and that they are important.

By introducing new employees to senior management and by spending time to build in them an appreciation of the organization’s past and future direction, these programs create a sense of security and comfort. Also, they help convey the culture of the organization so that decisions get made that are more in line with accepted practices and that help the organization function more smoothly. Lastly, they expedite getting the new hires up to speed and productive. Some new hires take as long as a year to reach full productivity, especially if their jobs depend on interacting with many other employees or in linking work from different parts of the firm. Inexperienced employees, especially college hires, can have long learning curves that can be significantly shortened with good upfront education. Here are some tips on designing your own world-class onboarding experience:

1. Make the onboarding process formal but fun. Don’t assume that employees are just going to “pick up” all the things they need to know to be successful in your firm. What is obvious to you may be very obscure to someone just walking in the door. Make sure you develop a program that has substance and that addresses serious issues effectively. Content might include sessions on the corporate history, the values of the firm, an overview of the strategy and fiscal goals, perhaps an overview of the finances by the CFO, and a greeting from some senior-level executive. There could be explanations and examples of performance reviews and, with the manager present, the initial expectations of the employee could be discussed, agreed to, and written down. One of the tests of success is when a new employee can tell you the company strategy or general direction and knows the sales level and stock price of the firm. While you may know this and feel it is second nature, new employees most likely won’t have any of this knowledge unless you take the time to make sure they learn it. All of these activities set a stage for productive work that’s consistent with business goals.

2. Good onboarding programs may extend over several months. After an intensive one- or two-day session upfront to start things off, subsequent activities may extend over several months at periodic intervals. Some programs include rotational assignments; others may include special projects that are designed to expose the new employee to parts of the company he would not normally have any contact with. An executive, for example, could be given as assignment to find out something about the manufacturing operations that would require her to actually go to the factory and gather data. This way she sees how other employees work, and begins to get a feel for the culture in action. Scheduling events several months’ out gives you the opportunity to get into topics in an in-depth way that short programs cannot. Another idea: A get-together of all the employees hired in a particular month or quarter, with activities designed to introduce them to one another. This helps new employees build a network that they can use to get work done and to learn about other parts of the organization. There might be a tour or, if you firm has numerous locations, you might be able to have a tour of one of the sites the employee does not work at.

3. Use e-learning and the Internet extensively. Today, bits and bytes are the linga franca of most firms. Every employee needs to get used to using the corporate intranet and become familiar with how to get things done using these tools. A portion of many onboarding programs is now developed as e-learning modules and can be offered to the employee and their family before they even start. New employees can get their spouse involved in choosing benefits and in learning about the firm and its history. The more that spouses are part of the work life, the less chance that someone will leave on a whim. Usually, when a spouse feels connected to the workplace as well, decisions will not be made hastily, but only after some conversation and discussion. Topics that can be covered best in e-learning modules include the history of the firm, organization structure, and of course, the benefits offered. Some onboarding programs have as much as 40 percent of the total content delivered over the Internet. Recruitmax offers its award-winning Aloha program to automate and improve the onboarding process There are other tools from Futuretech and from Cornerstone that also offer the ability to automate a significant part of the onboarding process.

4. Educate managers about the need to provide meaningful discussion and reflective work experiences. Many recent surveys show that the relationship with the manager is one of the most significant in an employee’s work life. Most employee turnover is ultimately caused by that relationship (or lack of it), which makes the ability to assimilate new employees a core competency of managers. An employee’s immediate manager controls all career progression, educational opportunities, and the assignment of projects. So a manager who takes time to discuss issues with a new employee, who shows concern over that person’s assimilation and who knows what the employee can do and wants to do, will make wiser decisions and build loyalty over time. The manager should be included in the onboarding process. Some firms have the managers attend a session designed to provide the employee with an initial set of goals — perhaps for the first 30 to 60 days. Others include the manager in team-building exercises or have a luncheon during which the manager sits with the new employee. At the executive level, the CEO can invite new hires to dinner at his or her home or set up a special quarterly new executive dinner and reception. The key is to make sure the manager has a real role in both the formal process of onboarding as well as in the informal one that happens every day.

5. Assign mentors or coaches to each new employee for the first 90 days of employment. Research shows very clearly that providing a mentor who can offer insights into the corporate culture, who can explain the organizational structure and help the new employee understand why things get done in the way they do, is a major contributor to increased productivity and lower turnover. These mentors should be individuals who are exemplars of the kind of behavior and results-orientation that your firm would like all its employees to exhibit. The role of these mentors can be very simple — as simple as going to lunch once a week with the new hire to show her the ropes and transmit some of the tacit culture that is never articulated or often even acknowledged in formal sessions. These mentors are the vehicles to educate the new hire, and they should be trained to serve as listeners who can intervene quietly with a manager if an issue arises. They need to be respected and well-networked in the organization. Assimilation can lead to smoother operating functions, lower turnover, and better employee satisfaction. And, they cost only a fraction of what turnover and recruiting costs your firm each year. A good program will help you weather both the coming turnover and subsequent hiring boom.

If you want a successful onboarding process, one that quickly engages new employees and helps them succeed — rather than leaving them with “new hire’s remorse” — there’s a mantra you must remember. More importantly, you need everyone on your management team to remember this mantra. It comes from a lesson that branding guru Scott Bedbury learned at Starbucks.

After joining the java juggernaut, he went on a coffee-hunting expedition with Dave Olsen, Starkbucks’ chief coffee buyer. Bedbury, author of A New Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century, probed Olsen for the secret to Starbucks’ branding success. What was, to use anthropologist and philosopher Gregory Bateson’s famous term, the critical “difference that makes a difference”? What mattered the most to the company’s branding success? Was it all about the coffee beans; were they that different? Was it the ambience Starbucks has so assiduously created? Was it the employees they’ve hired? What particular part of their winning combination mattered most? After pondering Bedbury’s question and weighing the variables, Mr. Olsen responded: “Everything matters.” All world-class brand managers know that everything matters. They know that every communication and every interaction with the customer matters. Every decision and every choice matters, because they will either strengthen or weaken a brand. This same principle holds true when it comes to organizational and managerial practices and how they affect employee morale, engagement, and pride. Every decision, every moment of truth in which an employee bumps up against organizational policies, procedures, and processes matters.

Noticing Minor Flaws

The principle “everything matters” is especially true in the first 60 to 90 days of an employee’s tenure with your company, because employees are the most impressionable during this period. When people are in unfamiliar territory, they are more alert for any clues that will help them navigate the terrain. In this state of uncertainty, they are also more likely to leap to conclusions when forming perceptions and opinions. This is because when we feel vulnerable and uncertain, we’re more prone to remove any uncertainty possible. To use a term from cognitive psychology, they are vulnerable to making “premature cognitive commitments.” When we make a premature cognitive commitment, we leap to a conclusion before having enough data to make a truly informed choice. Because new hires are more vigilant for clues, they’re likely to notice even the most minor examples of a poorly designed and executed orientation program and onboarding process. Because they are prone to premature cognitive commitments, they are more likely to see these as indicative of a poorly run organization that doesn’t care about employees. Thus, when it comes to onboarding, everything matters.

Everything You Do Sends a Message About Your Company

Every choice, every action, every communication has potential consequences. Every choice has a consequence in terms of how quickly an employee gets up to speed. Every choice communicates to the employee something about your organization. For instance, poorly organized, “fly by the seat of your pants” orientations communicate something very different about an organization than does a well-organized, professionally delivered program. Recognizing the importance of having new-hire orientation reflect and support the company’s culture of excellence, Eric Wood, president of EnviroSense, requested that his HR team conduct an “orientation makeover.” Because every action carries an implicit message, their new orientation program communicates to employees a message consistent with the company’s culture, mission, and values. “In our business,” says Wood, “high levels of performance and attention to detail are critical and expected of every employee. In order to ask for this level of performance, we want to make sure we show our employees the same commitment.”

Showing You Care Is One of the Strongest Drivers of Employee Engagement

The level of support provided to employees after leaving orientation also communicates an important message. Using a “sink or swim” approach to onboarding communicates a loud “we don’t care about or value you” message, while an onboarding process that provides new hires with a mentor and periodic check-ins sends employees the kind of message that leads to engagement and loyalty. At Community Living Association, a Maine non-profit organization that provides services to individuals with developmental disabilities, employees frequently complained about how awkward it was going into a new home when they were both new to the job and a stranger to their future client. To remedy this, new employees no longer have to “cold call” their new client. Instead, a staff member who already knows the clients makes the introduction. By demonstrating their concern for their new employees’ comfort, management obviously communicates a far different message than if the company had adopted a “that’s just how it is…deal with it” stance.

Is Your Orientation Program All Rules and Red Tape?

Another significant moment of truth that matters greatly is whether your orientation focuses on rules and regulations and neglects the inspirational component of being a new employee. Making orientation primarily about rules and regulations communicates something very different about an organization than an orientation that communicates these messages:

• “We’re happy you’re here.”

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Let’s play “Recruiting Monopoly.” As you’ll see, there are a number of critical stages in this game that correspond to the recruiting and hiring processes at most companies. You’ll start the game with $500 from the bank. If your hiring processes are really good, you’ll be able to win more than $3,000 (an ROI of 600 percent!). But if your hiring processes aren’t too good, you could go bankrupt before the first person gets hired — and go directly to jail. You’ll have to play the game a second time in order to hire another great person. This could get costly if your hiring processes are consistently a losing proposition. Let’s get started and see how well you do. Remember, you’ve got $500 at the start of the game.

Step 1: The Use of a Workforce Plan

A workforce plan is an annual forecast of hiring needs by position, by quarter. A plan like this gives you a three-to-six-month lead time on using all available sourcing channels to find top people. You earn $200 if you have a workforce plan in place and lose $100 if you don’t have one. Give yourself another $200 if you update this forecast quarterly. Forecast-to-forecast changes provide instant information about what’s going on in your business and what’s going to happen.

Step 2: The Quality of Your Job Requisitions

If you use traditional job descriptions that rely too heavily on skills, academics, and experiences, you lose $50. If you can’t obtain consensus from everyone on the hiring team as to real job needs before you start interviewing candidates, you lose another $50. If you suffer moving-job-spec syndrome, you lose another $50. If managers say they’ll know the person when they see him or her, you lose another $50. If recruiters can’t get enough time with the hiring manager to discuss the job, you lose another $50. You earn $250 if everyone on the hiring team is in agreement about the responsibilities and challenges involved in the job before they interview anyone. Getting consensus upfront is how you obtain consensus at the end. An article on performance profiles might help in this area.

Step 3a: Sourcing and Finding Top Active Candidates

If you’re an employer of choice with great candidates coming to your door without you doing any work, you don’t even need to play this game. For everyone else, if your jobs are easy to find using a Google or Yahoo! search — and don’t require candidates to go to a job board or directly to your website — you earn $100. Give yourself $50 if top candidates can very simply find your jobs at the top of the list just by putting in the city and job title. You earn $50 if your jobs have unique titles combined with compelling copy. You lose $100 if you do not have any of the above. You lose $50 if the first line on the job description is the requisition number. You lose another $50 if the ad copy emphasizes skills and experiences rather than opportunities.

Step 3b: Sourcing and Finding Top Passive and Diversity Candidates

Give yourself $100 if you have the ability to generate the names of top passive and diversity candidates through sources like Internet data-mining, competitive intelligence, or online networking tools such as ZoomInfo and LinkedIn. You lose $200 if you don’t do this step or if you can’t convert these names into a steady stream of great candidates. You win $100 if you can convince most of the people you network with to give you more names of highly qualified referrals. You earn another $100 if you spend more time calling these referrals and getting more referrals than you do working the original cold list of names. An article on networking might be useful.

Step 3c: The Use of Employee Referral Programs to Find Top Candidates

You earn $100 for having a professional and well-marketed employee referral program that consistently delivers strong candidates. Using Jobster qualifies here if everyone on your team uses it regularly. You earn $100 if recruiters personally and proactively solicit the names of top people from your top employees. You lose $200 if you don’t have a well-managed employee referral program in place that generates at least 20 percent of all new hires.

Sourcing Bonus!

Collect $500 if you have a consistent supply of top people for every important position.

Step 4: An Effective Interview and Assessment Process

You lose $100 if every interviewer interviews their own way. You lose $100 if you string a bunch of 30-minute interviews together. You lose $100 if your managers make instant decisions based on first impressions or gut feelings. You lose $100 if one superficial “no” vote can override the collective judgment of two or three other interviewers. You win $100 if all managers use a structured interview of some type and if they are trained and certified. You win $100 if there is some formal written assessment process in place that prevents superficial assessments. You win another $100 if this assessment is used in combination with a formal debriefing session with all interviewers before anyone makes a “yes” or “no” decision. You win $100 if top people come out of the interviewing process and feel they have been thoroughly evaluated. You win another $100 if these same candidates understand the job and specific challenges associated with the job.

Go Directly to Jail! Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200.

You lose half of the winnings you’ve accumulated thus far if you have to do searches over again more than 50 percent of the time. If good candidates get rejected for the wrong reasons and you need to find more candidates, you’re wasting your time. One slate of three to four candidates should suffice for any search. Some of the problems here include lack of consensus on real job needs as well as weak interviewing skills. If you have no winnings, stay in jail.

Step 5: Recruit, Negotiate, and Close

You lose $50 if you focus too much on compensation and not enough on the reach of the job and career growth. You lose $50 if more than 50 percent of candidates say “I have to think about it” when you extend an offer. You lose another $50 if you don’t know why you lost the previous $50. You lose $50 if you ask candidates if they’d relocate on the first call. You lose $100 if more than 30 percent of good candidates exclude themselves from consideration at anytime before the offer stage. You lose $50 if you can’t convince candidates they should take the job with just a modest salary increase. You earn $100 if 80 percent of the best candidates you want to attract are willing to stay involved through the whole assessment process. You earn $100 if you close 80 percent of your best candidates who have multiple opportunities with fair offers. An article on negotiating compensation will help here.

Step 6: Post-Offer Challenges

You lose $100 if more than 25 percent of your candidates who have accepted offers either don’t show up, accept counter-offers, or accept offers from other companies. You earn $100 if this happens less than 10 percent of the time. You earn $100 if you have a pre-boarding process in place during the period when the candidate accepts the offer, but before starting. This includes one or two formal meetings or discussions with the hiring manager.

Step 7: Onboarding

You earn $100 if you have an effective on-boarding process in place and lose $100 if you don’t. An effective on-boarding process includes training as necessary, a formal process to ensure that candidates have a clear understanding of job expectations before they start doing the job, and the preparation of some type of development program to ensure on-the-job success.

Step 8: Management and Development

You earn $200 if you have mostly good hires in combination with good managers and a formal staff development program. You lose $200 if managers aren’t as involved as they need to be in ensuring the success of their newly hired team members. Weak management is the primary cause of good hires gone bad.

Step 9: Talent Performance

You lose $500 if too many top people leave too soon for dumb reasons like weak management, inadequate resources, or the work not being consistent with candidates were told it would be. In this case, everything you’ve done has been a pure waste of time. You win $1,000 if most top people perform as predicted during the interview (that is, extremely well), if they are highly motivated, if they work well with others, if they have the potential to grow, and if they attract other top people. After all, this is the whole point of the game.

How Well Did You Do in Recruiting Monopoly?

What’s the ROI of your hiring process — your total winnings divided by the initial $500 as a percent? A properly functioning recruiting and hiring process should have an ROI of at least 100 percent. You’re really in trouble if you went bankrupt. In this case: Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. But who cares? After all, it’s just a game…

An investment in effective onboarding is an investment in employee retention, morale, and productivity. Research at Corning Glass Works revealed that employees who attended a structured orientation program were 69% more likely to remain with the company after three years than those who did not go through such a program. Another study conducted at Texas Instruments showed that employees whose orientation process was carefully attended to reached “full productivity” two months earlier than those whose orientation process was not. More recently, Hunter Douglas found that by upgrading their onboarding process, they were able to reduce their turnover from a staggering 70% at six months, to 16%.

These changes also translated into improved attendance, increased productivity, and — not surprisingly — a reduction in their damaged-goods rate. At Designer Blinds, an Omaha based manufacturer of window blinds, upgrading the onboarding process played a central role in reducing turnover from 200% annually to under 8%! Because of the dramatic drop in turnover, they were able to reduce their recruiting budget from $30,000 to $2,000. A 2003 study by Hewitt Associates demonstrating the connection between effective onboarding and engagement revealed that companies who invested the most time and resources in onboarding enjoyed the highest levels of employee engagement. Both research and common sense tell us that it makes sense to invest time and effort into preparing employees to be successful at their jobs. If you want them to become productive as quickly as possible, why would anyone not do what it took to make that happen? If you’re going to spend all that money on acquiring them and paying them to come to work, why would you not prepare them to succeed? Despite the obviousness of this, many organizations approach new hire orientation with a level of professionalism and quality they would never tolerate in their daily operations.

Orientation as Nightmare

Rex Castle, senior vice president of human resources of State National Bank of Lubbock, Texas, captures the typical new hire orientation nightmare:

You come in and sit down in monumentally uncomfortable chairs and are bombarded with papers, rules, policies…you know those ‘this is how you get fired’ sort of comments. If it’s a big employer and a big group of new hires, someone stands in front of a PowerPoint slide show and reads the slides to you. Usually it’s an HR underling who is totally uncomfortable in front of a group and rarely, if ever, smiles. You sign and sign and sign more paper than you would if you were buying a house, and then you walk out thinking, ‘Man, I hope I don’t get fired, but at least I know how to get fired.’ And those are the good orientations. The poor ones are done by a harried manager on location and God only knows what it is the employee is receiving in terms of an understanding of policies and procedures.

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