5 Things You Should Know About New Recruits

Recruitment drives can be initiated driven by emergency needs but there are some things you should know about new recruits. 

When it comes to your recruitment strategy and the onboarding of new recruits it is important to understand both new employee behaviour and your organizational needs. 

The success of this process will depend on your own leadership and the effort of your whole team.

• The excitement of new recruits
• The new recruit's feeling
• Negative onboarding benchmarks
• Onboarding definition explained
• New recruits and what to expect
• About new recruits - Conclusion

The excitement of new recruits

It is always exciting to welcome a new recruit because it is a sign that you are planning to make improvements in the workplace.

You are expecting to gain new experience to enhance your efforts for improvement.

The problem, on the other hand, is that you will never be sure if your recruitment process was successful until the new recruit is tried and tested.

On paper, everything is looking bright for the future but until you see results you cannot be sure.

The new recruit's feeling

It does not take long before the excitement of onboarding a new employee overrides your expectations of the new employee's performance and if not managed well can have a negative outcome for both parties.

It is here where leadership skills count as it is your duty to engage the new recruit through coaching, guidance, and constructive performance measurement.

The failing performance of a newly appointed staff member can mostly be assigned to poor leadership.

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Best Solution: Get your recruitment on track with the best software in the market

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Negative onboarding benchmarks

Failure often happens when your perception and your logic clashes and you set unreal expectations of what you see as an outcome.

It is better to be practical and know what you can expect and where possible failure is lurking in the shadows.

It is therefore very important to set up a comprehensive and structured onboarding process for new recruits entering a fully functional work environment.

Setting up onboarding benchmarks in line with expected outcomes is a more solid way to ensure fairness to both the new recruit and your organization. This removes the interference of perception and personal feelings which so often comes with poor leadership.

Onboarding definition explained

The definition of onboarding a new employee clearly states that it is the process of bringing a new employee into an already existing environment while introducing them to the organizational processes and culture.

While most organizations will bring in a new recruit and expect them to "automatically" fit in because they are supposed to be experienced it is crucial to understand the two most important factors that can affect integration.

• Organizational culture
• Organizational processes

Although these are present everywhere it differs dramatically from organization to organization. Over 60% of new recruits fail in the first 6 months because they are not able to adapt to either one of these.

According to studies, it shows that it can take up to 1 year for a new recruit to adapt to new work environments but only if they are a solid fit for the organizational culture.

Processes are processes and it is quicker for new employees to adapt and get used to them.

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Solution: Making onboarding easy with the right software

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New recruits and what to expect

Setting up an onboarding strategy can sometimes be tricky especially if you are not experienced in human behaviour but only focus on business outcomes.

There are some things common indicators you should expect when a new employee starts working for you.

1. They will seem at least 25% more efficient than they really are. Only after the first three months can a new recruit be assessed. It is proven that most recruits will settle into the new environment between 3 to 6 months. It is for this reason that 3-month probation periods will fail 90% of the time.
2. Most applicants will be desperate but it doesn't mean they have to accept substandard offers. Those accepting less than reasonable must be expected not to hang around too long.
3. A new recruit will always believe his last organization was better, bigger, and more rewarding. That is why you are recruiting them - for the knowledge and the experience they can bring with them. If after six months he still thinks his last place of employment was better he is either not as competent as suggested during recruitment or he is probably spending most of his day planning his exit plan.
4. A new recruit will assess his new environment within the first hour of starting and the perception of what the recruit has let himself in for will be shaped right there and now. That is why new recruits are better kept busy with induction and organizational briefing.
5. In the first month, the new recruit will try and reorganize the whole organization to replicate his last place of employment. If it's good or bad will depend on his last company or the reason you have employed him for.

New Recruits - Conclusion

The saying "A new broom sweeps clean" will always be relevant in this case but you can avoid disappointment if you know what to look for and your employee engagement skills are refined.

It is important to take all factors into consideration before you start looking for new recruits. Rushing into hiring too quickly will be a bad investment on your part.