Setting expectations for a new hire's first weeks

As part of my role as a manager or technical lead, I’ve onboarded many new hires into different teams. The interesting thing is that in most cases, new hires will fit into two categories when facing a problem they can’t solve during their first weeks.

Usual Responses to Getting Stuck

Struggling in silence

For some reason, they don’t want to ask for help and choose to power through the problem. Maybe it’s to not appear incompetent, to prove themselves to their new team, or just to avoid disturbing other people.

In some situations they will figure it out after a lot of pain… but in others they will spend an unreasonable amount time and energy to deliver something, if they even deliver something at all! After a couple of weeks, they’ll end up exhausted and feeling like failures, even if they were performing adequately by new hire standards.

Asking for help right away

When facing any issue, or just when they have a random question, they will ask a colleague right away. Again, there can be many reasons: they want to be onboarded as fast as possible, they are frustrated by how slow they are in their new role when they were so efficient in their previous company, they want to take the opportunity to chat with different people…

As a result, they will progress quickly, but they will require a lot of time from the team and might not attain the same level of long-term insights as someone who spent time struggling to reach a solution. The team might also start to resent them for asking them questions that could have been solved by spending a few extra minutes on the topic.

Making It Straightforward

Both situations feel very normal to me if expectations are not set. To address it, I do 3 very simple things to clarify what is normal for someone in their situation in this company, and I think it can apply to most teams. Depending on the company, the complexity of the role and the seniority of the person I will keep this setup for a few weeks.

1. Set global expectations for the onboarding

During our first interaction, I’ll set my expectations for the onboarding period as a whole.

Usually it’ll be a variation of: “You might feel like you are struggling on some tasks that were second nature in your previous company.. It’s normal, it’s your first weeks and there are some ways of working and tools you need to get used to. I won’t judge you based on speed, but instead on your capacity to grow into the role over your onboarding period. I’ll make sure to give you feedback very frequently so that you do not have to guess if you are on track or not”.

2. Create space to ask questions

I’ll set random 15 to 30 minutes meetings with the person, usually every day during the first week, and then every couple of days for 2 more weeks.

I will then tell them “if you have any questions for something that is not blocking you or directly relevant to your current task, write them down and we’ll address them during one of those meetings. It can be on any topic, there are no dumb questions so don’t hesitate to ask anything”.

3. Share how long they should take before asking for help

Finally, when I’ll give them a task, I’ll add something like “For this task, give it a try for at least 2 hours. If you have made no clear progress after that reach out for help. However, don’t ask for help before, it won’t be time wasted even if you don’t succeed. We’ll review what you tried, and what we can improve so that the next person doesn’t get stuck”.

Of course the “2 hours” will vary depending on the task, but I’ll rarely make it over half a day.

Benefits

With this approach, I generally end up having a good balance between autonomy and speed.

Expectations are clearer, new hires will take time to wrestle with a problem but won’t also get stuck for too long, which I think reduce the stress of being new to a team. It also helps with improving documentation and onboarding tasks, since you know that the person will have spent time looking for answers and failed.

Finally, if everyone on the team has gone through a similar process, they will be more open to helping new team members when they ask for assistance, knowing they have spent time trying to solve the issue. It will also control the time impact that a new hire will have on a team.