An amazing candidate has accepted your offer and will join soon. How do you help them be successful in their new job and new company? It starts with communicating clear goals to your new hire and then continually enabling them to achieve these goals. 

Here’s my New Hire Onboarding 5-1s Template.

1) Goals and OKRs: The 5-1s refer to the goals for day 1, week 1, month 1, quarter 1, and year 1. The goals may be related to onboarding, learning, and performance.

2) Context: This is context about the company objectives, product area objectives, market and competition, people to meet, and useful docs and tools.

3) What we learned about you: This covers why the hiring team was excited about the new hire and where they believe the new hire might face challenges. 

4) Job description: for reference. 

Why not 30-60-90 days? In fast-moving companies including startups, 30 days is too long for the new hire and the company to develop a shared sense of a successful fit. Week 1 goals enable the new hire and the company with an early success, after which success can compound itself. 

Prepare this onboarding document before the new hire joins and deliver it to them on their day 1. Meet with them to discuss it, and later use it as a shared document. Start with the last section first: “What we learned about you”.  

All the best to you and your new hire! 

PS: Check out more articles on building products. I write to pay it forward and to sharpen my thinking.