By Lisa Rory
Business Development Manager at Venable

Since the start of the pandemic, our industry has seen a number of shifts. Not just in how we approach executing our daily tasks, but also in the way we qualify progress in our careers and what levers are most important when considering job satisfaction.

The most impactful shift in career development has been in ensuring effective onboarding and orientation at the start of your tenure at a new place. We can no longer start to see the path forward during the interview process; those impressions happen a lot later in the process. It is in the first few months that many firms are losing their new hires, and it is in this space that we can turn things around and keep them, too. Hiring new people and investing time and money in training only to have them leave before the end of the first year is a costly and messy business.

Pre-pandemic, when a candidate would interview in person, this would be the first entrée into work culture. They would walk through the halls, be escorted to a conference room where they might be able to see people passing, hear conversations in the office, and get a feel for the mood in the building. And while this was not always the best time to get a sense of the true culture of the firm, it was certainly one opportunity to picture themselves working in the space.

If you were lucky, you found a good fit, and then you can convince them of that, too. So, you invite them for a few more rounds of interviews and additional opportunities to confirm that the place they are pursuing a role in is the best place to nurture their careers. Candidates could gather important early indicators of whether the firm makes sense for their career before the first day. Today that is completely different. Now more than two rounds of Zoom interviews can be quite unbearable, and getting a feel for people and personalities is stunted because of technical difficulties and hazy computer screens. That means if an offer is accepted you have about three to six months to convince your candidate to stay.

Today, impressions are formed during onboarding, not to be confused with orientation, and so much consideration must be given to this time because it is now serving an additional purpose. Hiring managers need to ensure that onboarding is smooth and tells a complete story of firm culture and where that new hire fits in the fabric of the firm. You must also set expectations and mark a clear path for career progression. All of this needs to happen the first few weeks. However, in the last year we have seen a number of firms fall short of this expectation because of the hybrid environment. Where we had some fall back in person, our new virtual environment is showing the gaps in our processes, and an onboarding process that is whipped together for business professionals as an afterthought is reading as just that, an afterthought.

Managers are bombarded with all the new demands that balancing a team in this environment can bring, and often are not handed a go-to playbook for what onboarding should look like. Here are a few helpful tips for smoothing the on boarding process.

• Assign a mentor. This goes without saying but a new employee should have someone to ask questions of that isn’t their boss. They should have a peer who has tenure to run to with random, “how do I find this?” or “what is the last name of that partner?” They won’t remember all the information provided during orientation and should be given an outlet.
• Ensure expectations for success are clear. Hand over documents outlining ongoing tasks. Give examples of good work for them to review and go over what an incomplete project might look like. Don’t stop with “this is what a perfect completed project is”; you should always give examples of common mistakes and how to overcome those. Whether that is through using internal resources or simply using technology, success should be clearly defined and failure should be outlined as well.
• Do a walk around the office on “in days” so that the new hire can meet key stakeholders in person. This may require some additional organization and scheduling but assigning a face to the work for your key attorneys will help to smooth any new person issues that will arise.
• Invite your employee to shadow you during meetings and make time to answer questions about your techniques and how you spot issues. So much of our job is about relationships and navigating coaching, so we should make time to teach those softer skills. Do not make the mistake of thinking that a seasoned individual will be able to figure it out. When layering everyday challenges with firm culture and norms, you can quickly get into trouble, and new hires need those extra tips and tricks for navigating new spaces.

This post originally appeared in the LMA Mid-Atlantic Region member newsletter, October 2022