onboarding

Vic’s Learnings: How to provide your new hires with relevant content

Victor Romijn

June 29, 2022

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The magic word in the technology world is 'relevance'. Tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram as well as Youtube, Spotify or Netflix have become as big as they are because they offer relevant information. And what is relevant is based on their algorithms. If you often listen to music of a certain genre, you will get more song suggestions in the same category and genre after that. Or if you often watch thrillers, you'll get another thriller as a suggestion.

This is because it is expected to be relevant for you based on your past experiences. All this should make you stay on the platform longer and thus (with the exception of Netflix) consume more ads.

Offer relevant information for a tailor made onboarding

Within onboarding, relevance is also a key word. Good onboarding consists of relevant information for your new employee. And what is relevant to each new hire can of course vary considerably. For example, a new hire in marketing will find other information important than an employee in HR.

Preferably, you offer everyone a customized onboarding experience, based on their function, history, knowledge, experience. That might be possible in small organizations, but if you onboard people on a larger scale, you'll probably face the challenge of it taking a lot of time.

A balance between personal and generic onboarding

In the ideal situation, you find a balance between personal and general onboarding. Personalization takes a lot of time and maintenance but creates a memorable experience for your new hires . While a very generic onboarding is easy to maintain but again can come across as impersonal. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

From a practical point of view, I often see our clients personalizing the onboarding experience in a number of areas based on: where the company is located, the new hire’s job function and by using the employee's name. You can, of course, differentiate between groups in other areas as well, depending on your organization.

The new employee as the starting point

But what is most important is to keep using the new employee as the starting point. What is relevant to them? Not: what do we want to tell? But: what does the employee want to know?

Obviously, if Netflix only presents series’ in a category that they themselves like, users will drop out very quickly. In onboarding, it's no different.

Want more learnings from Victor? Check out his blog on the onboarding of executives.

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