How to Lose a Candidate in 10 Days

At Zinc, the onboarding process is deliberately designed to protect the time of new employees and help them get to know the company. For the first two weeks, employees focus specifically on onboarding — no role-related tasks allowed. “It’s a very self-sufficient onboarding process,” said Sophie Mann, Zinc’s People Partner. “Which means that people can go about it in a way that makes sense for them.”

new employees at Zinc up for success after their first two weeks.

Other companies take different approaches: Think of Zapier’s focus on onboarding remote employees and using their product, or AirBnB’s focus on “belonging at work” in line with core values. Whatever you choose to focus on, it should be reflected in the entire candidate experience, from application to onboarding.

Think the story ends at happily ever after

This level of autonomy might not be right for every company, but it’s something that consistently sets

In Two Weeks Notice , everything is going (sort of) well at Sandra Bullock’s new job with Hugh Grant — until, of course, values collide and burnout surfaces. She takes the job to preserve a local community centre, but he hires her for her no-nonsense opinion on everything from his stationery to legal issues. Their personalities clash, sparks fly, and she quits. That story, of course, has a happy ending. But if a new employee discovers that the job they’ve just joined isn’t the one that they were sold during the interview process, it can have consequences: a

gap where you need a key skill, wasted time, and a damaged employer brand. Especially if Hugh Grant isn’t there to charm them into staying. Onboarding is essential. And more than 800 of our respondents know it! But the trouble comes when the interview process isn’t aligned with onboarding, employee expectations, or hiring manager requirements.

Onboarding agenda

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So what’s a plucky young environmental lawyer to do?

1 New employees get a a Notion page with tasks broken down by onboarding day.

2 They schedule in meet the team sessions across the entire business.

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5 They’re given role-specific resources to read and absorb.

Meet Maggie

They meet their Zinc mentor , a buddy from a different team who helps them problem solve and learn more about how the company works.

Meet Marketing

82 % of respondents were happy with their onboarding process

Meet Account Management

82 %

Meet Tech

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10 We ask them for feedback once the two weeks is up,

Ash customer call

Send checks

Lunch and learn

They sit in on customer calls , learning about pain points and Zinc’s solutions.

At the end of the two weeks, they give a lunch and learn about a topic of their choice: Something that stuck out from their onboarding, skills from a past job, or ideas for improvement.

40 % have had a candidate leave in the first six months because the job wasn’t as advertised

Fill out references

They’re assigned tasks to complete in the Zinc product , like sending checks and filling out references.

and collect it for implementation.

Fill feedback form

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