Early Career Onboarding: How HR Can Set Managers Up to Succeed
In my last post on what early career employees need in week one, I wrote about what early career employees need in their first week on the job. I opened with a story about an employee who came to find me four weeks into their new role. They still didn't have any meaningful work to do. Their manager hadn't built an onboarding plan. Hadn't really prepared at all.
I've told that story a number of time. And usually when people hear it, they think, “the manager is the villain!”
That’s not actually the perspective I have. Up until that moment, I had been focusing all my attention on the early career employees. I had built a robust onboarding experience. I was checking in with them regularly during the first few months. And I was trusting that other people at my company had trained managers to be great managers.
But what did that manager's onboarding look like when they stepped into their role? If they were trained on how to onboard employees, did anyone sit down with them and explain what early career employees actually need? Did anyone tell them that onboarding a recent grad is a fundamentally different challenge than onboarding someone with ten years of experience?
Probably not.
We hold managers accountable for week one. We just don't always prepare them for it. And that's not a manager problem. That's a systems problem — and it lands squarely in HR's lap.
Here are four things HR can do before an early career employee's first day to set their manager up to succeed.
Host a Manager Pre-Boarding Session
Before your early career employee arrives, bring their manager in for a conversation specifically about what early career onboarding looks like — and how it differs from onboarding a seasoned professional.
This isn't about doubting the manager. It's about context. An experienced hire comes with organizational fluency, professional confidence, and a clear sense of how to navigate a new environment. An early career hire is often building all of those things for the first time. They need more clarity, more context, more feedback, and more patience than most managers are used to giving. Additionally, it’s a great opportunity to share any themes or feedback you’ve been hearing from the previous cohort of early career and their managers.
A 30-minute conversation before day one can shift a manager's entire approach. Most managers, when they understand the difference, want to show up better. They just needed someone to explain it.
Assign a Peer Mentor
Find the managers in your organization who are genuinely great at onboarding early career employees. Then ask them to mentor the managers who are about to do it for the first time — or who haven't done it well in the past.
This works better than top-down training for a simple reason: managers trust their peers. Advice from someone who is deep in the work, navigating the same day-to-day realities, lands differently than advice from someone who feels removed from it. Peer mentorship is an underused development tool and this is a perfect place to put it to work.
Let Managers Hear Directly from Early Career Employees
There is no substitute for this one, but you have options.
You could set up a reverse mentoring relationship where a manager meets regularly with an early career employee — not on their team — to learn from their experience.
You could organize a facilitated panel of early career employees with a room full of managers listening and asking questions.
You could schedule lunch and learns with a few early career employees and a few managers.
Or you could probably think of something else.
What managers hear in those conversations is almost always different from what they assumed. The things early career employees actually struggle with, what they wish their managers understood, what would have made their first few weeks easier — that information is invaluable. And it tends to stick in a way that a training module never does.
Check In the Week Before
This one is simple and almost nobody does it.
The week before your early career employee starts, reach out to their manager. Ask how they're feeling. See if they have any final questions. Make sure the onboarding plan is ready.
What you're really doing is sending a signal: someone is paying attention. Someone cares how this goes. In my experience, just knowing that someone else is watching — not to judge, but to support — causes managers to show up with more focus and more intention.
It takes 5-15 minutes. It changes the dynamic entirely.
Final Thoughts
Managers don't fail early career employees because they don't care. They fail them because nobody invested in preparing them for this specific challenge. That's not a manager problem. That's a systems problem.
HR has the ability to fix it. These four steps are a good place to start.
If you're looking for a partner to help design or deliver early career development at your company — including support for the managers leading it — I'd love to have that conversation.