First of all, what is pre-boarding?

A lot of value is put on the onboarding process – and rightly so – but the pre-boarding one is arguably just as important to get right. The pre-boarding process refers to the period between an offer being made and the candidate’s first day in the role. This phase can be really important in getting your new hire settled in and feeling at home with the company. Get it wrong, and you could have a new hire coming into the office for the first time feeling reserved and unsure. But get it right, and you could facilitate a super smooth transition and have a very happy candidate on your hands!

Communication is king (as always)

It can be really unsettling to receive a job offer and then have absolutely no contact with the company until the day you walk into the office/first sign on. It’s going to stir up some intense anxiety that could be avoided and possibly even put your future hire off the role. Instead, you want to open clear communication channels in this phase so that they feel they can come to you with any queries, and feel equipped for day one.

Start off with a welcome email containing timings, location, maybe a little snippet of what the day will look like and express how excited you are for them to start. Depending on if it's office-based, remote or hybrid, the most common questions people will have are:

• What time should I arrive/clock in?
• What’s the dress code, if there is one?
• Where can I park? How do I find the front door/get into the building?
• What equipment should I bring/have ready?
• What do most people do for lunch?
• How do people prefer to communicate in the company? (E.g. Slack/Teams?)
• Who do I report to on a day-to-day basis, and which platform can I contact them through?

Try to cover these basics but mostly just make sure they feel comfortable to shoot over any questions they may have!

Connect them with team members

Feeling valued within the team and getting on with coworkers is such a core aspect of success during the onboarding stage, so get started early doors! You can do things like deskside introductions and maybe a team lunch on the first day or if it’s remote, organise an informal morning chat over Teams or whichever platform you use. But either way you can start forming these connections even before the candidate's start date. Ask your new hire to write a short bio which you can share with the team, and do an internal company-wide introduction prior to them joining – this way people can be ready to greet them when they come into the office!

Prior to this, it also helps to have a stage of the interview that allows them to chat to some team members outside of the formal interview structure, without senior members present, so they have a chance to form some connections. This way, they will feel more comfortable on their first day and already have some friendly faces to say hello to.

Ask for feedback on your interview process

The period before they start is a good opportunity to get some feedback on your interview process –there’s always room to improve, and it could really support your next hire. Having a quick chat about this, whether it’s over the phone or over email, just shows you’re eager to learn and are truly invested in your employee’s wellbeing. It’s also just another way to open up those communication channels, and they’ll see it as a really positive sign, and will feel more relaxed on their first day in turn.

Get a head start on admin

There’s nothing worse than starting a new job and nothing is set up at your desk, there’s IT problems galore and you’re snowed under with boring admin work. If you can outsource some of the more basic admin material such as contracts and HR bits to this pre-boarding period, that will make your new hire’s first day much more dynamic and enjoyable. It’s also a good idea to get the IT configuration organised beforehand; Harris Fanaroff says IT issues come up in half of the onboarding/preboarding conversations he has. Any new hire here at ISL Talent walks in to their laptop on their desk set up with the core accounts and a list of key passwords available, so they are able to log in quickly to relevant software and get stuck in! (We also greet them with a branded ISL notebook and hoodie by the way!)

If you have any questions about your pre-boarding strategy, connect with our CEO and co-founder Alan Furley on LinkedIn, or check out our Founder’s Guide for a comprehensive breakdown of your hiring process from start to finish.