Onboarding recent graduates, remotely

“Thought leaders” will tell you that remote and hybrid work are here to stay. Which sounds great, but the devil is in the details.

Sure, your more experienced folks may love working from home, but they already know how to work.

What about your early-in-career folks? That new hire class coming straight from university? I don’t know about you, but I needed about two years in the workforce to understand how to office, period.

Here are a few things to think about and recommendations from my experience leading a remote team, and onboarding several classes of early-in-career employees remotely:

• From jump, set different expectations for the early-in-career folks, like a norm that they need to be in the office 2 days a week.

• Is it time for that L&D hire to help teach folks how to work?

• Or, less of a lift, bring in some consistent consultants, a speaker series, or required reading you discuss as an organization. My personal favorite is Julia Evans’s “Help I Need a Manager.”

• Prototype a shadow program where early-in-career folks sit in on meetings with different roles, or more senior folks. This could be part of your onboarding process.

• Consider luring the senior folks to participate in the shadow program with additional perks, like equity or additional L&D budget.

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