The Value of Onboarding New Hires

About a year and a half ago, Lantern Partners integrated an innovative step into our senior executive recruitment process: Onboarding.

It works like this: After a final decision has been made on a new hire, Lantern Partners holds an onboarding meeting with the hiring manager and HR representatives from the client company in order to assist with the new hire’s transition into his or her position.

In that meeting, Lantern Partners addresses with the client the new hire’s strengths, as well as all potential stumbling blocks — based on extensive data and research — that could keep the new hire from being extremely successful in his or her new role. From the meeting, the client consolidates a wealth of information that can then be utilized with both formal and informal professional development.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses; no executive is perfect. Thus, it’s all about being proactive to increase the odds that the new hire will reach optimum success.

What’s crucial to the data-heavy onboarding meeting is the detailed approach Lantern Partners takes from the very start of the recruiting process. From the get-go, Lantern Partners is uncommonly thorough in our effort to make sure the job description of the ideal candidate is factually correct and competency based. With the client, we then establish a list of job-specific competencies that a candidate would have learned from on-the-job experience. From there, we create a custom competency scorecard used in candidates’ interviews with both Lantern Partners and the client.

Lantern Partners also gathers information on the candidates through a custom online leadership trait assessment, which focuses on topics such as strategic vision, creativity, and communications — both verbal and written. Even more objective, comprehensive data is gathered on candidates through in-depth reference checks with the reference sources strategically chosen by us to best reveal candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.

Traditionally, search firms conclude services as soon as a position is filled. However, we believe that squanders a marvelous opportunity for us to be helpful to our client.

That’s where onboarding comes into play.

Because of our detail-oriented approach to the recruitment process, we’re able to bring to the onboarding meeting extensive pertinent data — scorecard results from us and the client, online assessment results, and reference check results — on the new hire. And the more the client knows about the new hire’s strengths and weaknesses, the more the client can take a deeply informed, proactive approach to tailoring the new hire’s path to ultimate success.

For your senior executive recruitment needs, choose Lantern Partners. We go the extra mile to help you find the right executive and set them up for success.

Collin L. Sprau, Partner
About Collin L. Sprau, Partner

Collin recruits senior executives across a wide variety of industries with an emphasis on technology officers and their direct reports in mid-cap and large industrial companies.

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