What Early Career Employees Need in Week One
About a month into an early career employee’s start date, they came to find me.
The employee still didn't have any meaningful work to do. Four weeks in and mostly just making copies, reading updates and responding to e-mails. Their manager hadn't built an onboarding plan. Hadn't really prepared at all. This employee had been showing up every day excited to do important work. And every day their manager gave them scraps, they had to wonder if it was because the manager didn’t trust them, didn’t care about them, or worse, didn’t believe in them.
Onboarding in the first 90 days gets a lot of attention. But honestly? Most managers have already lost the plot by then. Week one is where onboarding starts. And week one is where too many managers show up underprepared or completely unprepared.
Here are some thoughts on how to create a strong start for early career employees in Week 1.
Build the Plan Before They Arrive
A thoughtful, written onboarding plan isn't a nice-to-have. It's the foundation.
Not a checklist of HR tasks. An actual plan. Who is on the team. What the team is working toward. Who this person should meet in their first few weeks and what those conversations should cover. Where the important documents live. What you expect around working hours, communication preferences, and feedback cadence.
I started requiring managers to submit their onboarding plans to me a week before their early career employee's first day. Early on, I reviewed every one of them in detail. But over time, I noticed something. Just knowing someone else was going to read the plan made managers write better plans. The accountability alone changed the quality.
If you don't have someone holding you accountable... hold yourself accountable. Write the plan anyway.
Show Them the Culture, Don't Just Describe It
Don't let your new hire sit in an office by themselves for a week wondering what the vibe is.
Do a team lunch. Schedule a team meeting where they can watch how the group actually communicates with each other. If your team has swag, make sure it's on their desk or in their mailbox on Day 1. These are small things. They signal something big: you belong here.
Culture isn't a slide in an orientation deck. It's experienced. Give them something to experience in week one.
Get Them Productive on Day 1
Few things are worse than showing up to a new job and spending your first day unable to log into your computer, unable to check your e-mail, waiting on IT to respond to a request for help, and dialing into meetings from your personal phone.
It sounds basic. It happens constantly.
Partner with your IT team before your employee starts. Make sure the laptop is ready. Email access is live. The tools they need are installed. When someone can be productive on their first day, they feel like they belong. When they can't, they wonder if anyone knew they were coming.
Give Them a Safe Space
Early career employees have a lot of questions. Some of those questions they don’t want to ask to anyone in a position of power.
They don't want to seem unprepared. They don't want to bother anyone. They definitely don't want their manager to think they don't know what they're doing.
Find them a buddy. A peer mentor. Connect them to a Young Professionals ERG or just introduce them to other recent hires. The goal is simple: they need at least one person they can go to with the questions they think are dumb questions. Those questions aren't dumb. They're just new.
Give Feedback Before the Week Is Over
This one is new for me and I haven’t tested it yet. But I’m certain it will be valuable. It might even end up being the most important thing on this list.
By the end of week one, give your new hire feedback on at least one thing they did well and one thing to work on. It doesn't have to be big. Something like: "Hey, I noticed you spent a lot of time this week reading through documents. That makes sense. But I'd encourage you to spend more time having conversations and building relationships. Relationships are how we usually get work done in this role."
That's it. Simple, specific, kind.
And then ask for feedback yourself. On Day 2 or 3, set the expectation: at the end of this week, I'm going to ask you how well I'm setting you up for success and what else I could be doing. Then actually ask. And actually listen.
You're not just getting useful information. You're modeling the thing you want them to do for the rest of their career.
Week one sets the tone for everything that follows. The manager who shows up prepared, present, and intentional in those first five days is the manager their employee will trust six months from now. The one who doesn't? Let’s just assume your employee is already thinking about their next role.
Need help with your onboarding?
Connect with TaberNext to have a discussion about what your company is doing and where you could use additional support. And check out our Essentials Series and Leadership Series to see how we can build knowledge and connection with your early career cohorts.