Onboarding New Hires

# Onboarding New Hires - All Guest Insights

*14 guests, 14 mentions*

---

## Brandon Chu
*Brandon Chu*

> "one amazing, and just the context, I'm really old at Shopify now... people that would join my team already knew how I thought. It was pretty onboarded a lot of the PMs that would join my team because obviously, they're going to look for who their leads is and Google that a bit"

**Insight:** Publicly documenting your philosophy and mental models acts as a passive onboarding system for future hires.

**Tactical advice:**
- Write about your management and product philosophy to help new hires ramp up before their first day

*Timestamp: 31:49*


## Deb Liu
*Deb Liu*

> "I created, it's actually when I joined Ancestry... I decided I was going to adapt all of those things into a summary and then I was going to try it real time in my blog... it's focused on listening and learning first and then doing. So that's the crux of it, which is in those 90-days it's like you got to get used to the environment. You want to have some impact at the start. You want to have a couple quick wins, but you want to understand the lay of the land and you want to listen."

**Insight:** A successful onboarding follows a 'diagnose before you treat' philosophy, prioritizing listening and cultural alignment before major execution.

**Tactical advice:**
- Conduct a 'listening tour' in the first 30 days, meeting as many stakeholders as possible
- Summarize findings into a 'state of the union' to show the team they have been heard
- Align on vision in the second 30 days and move to full execution by day 90

*Timestamp: 00:51:18*


## Heidi Helfand
*Heidi Helfand*

> "So the tip with one by one is when someone joins, help them feel a sense of belonging, and you can do that through not having their first day be them sitting over there alone. You could have someone have a first pair."

**Insight:** Successful onboarding prioritizes immediate social integration and belonging through collaborative work like pairing.

**Tactical advice:**
- Ensure new hires are not left to work alone on their first day
- Assign a 'first pair' partner to work with the new hire immediately
- Encourage new hires to share their personal stories to increase retention and connection

*Timestamp: 00:35:12*


## Kenneth Berger
*Kenneth Berger*

> "I recommend to a lot of founders for maybe their first 10 or 15, or 20 employees of just have a relationship design conversation with each of them when they're first hired."

**Insight:** Early alignment on working styles and expectations prevents future friction and 'out of integrity' behavior.

**Tactical advice:**
- Conduct a 'relationship design' conversation during the first few weeks
- Collaboratively figure out the best way to work together given the specific roles and personalities involved

*Timestamp: 01:00:13*


## Lauren Ipsen
*Lauren Ipsen*

> "The 90 day plan is something that's overused but so necessary, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. So that component and then, okay, a year from now, what should this person be doing? Two years from now?"

**Insight:** A concrete 90-day plan is essential for defining immediate success and long-term trajectory for senior hires.

**Tactical advice:**
- Define what 'crushing it' looks like at the 90-day, 1-year, and 2-year marks before starting the search.

*Timestamp: 00:15:24*


## Melissa Tan
*Melissa Tan*

> "How do I ramp them up as quickly as possible... make sure it's clear what success looks like in their first 90 days? And then how do I help them secure early wins essentially? So I often will suggest, 'Hey, you should do this presentation. It's a great way to get visibility early in your journey here.'"

**Insight:** Effective onboarding focuses on defining clear 90-day success metrics and engineering early 'wins' to build the new hire's internal credibility.

**Tactical advice:**
- Define specific success criteria for the first 90 days
- Identify 'low-hanging fruit' projects fo