Skills are defined as the ability to do work. They do include personal abilities that the I.T. Professional possesses but these abilities are unused in the early phase of a new I.T. Professional's employment until their environment is setup.

The candidate setup process entails a myriad of processes that are performed both before and after the candidate begins their first day of work. This processing requires integration with many different groups, several of which do not interact with each other. Yet their interaction is critical to the overall success of the setup process. This is the main reason that setup tasks are so poorly executed within an I.T. organization.

To better understand the process we have categorized these steps into these four functional areas. Although all of the steps are essential, we have found there is a sliding scale of difficulty among them. These are represented in this graphic.

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To further explore the onboarding definition we look at Knowledge. Each candidate has their own individual knowledge which should have been fully vetted in the interview process. However in this context, knowledge is the specific lessons the candidate does not yet have in order to perform their daily work within the organization. This requires the candidate to be trained on the specific practices and procedures of that organization. Only then will they be able to perform their daily work.

This training is hierarchical in nature and gets more specific to the individual as you continue down the spectrum. As one might expect this training becomes more complex to perform also as you move down the spectrum, especially into more I.T. centric areas of knowledge. We have further defined these areas of training into specific categories.

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Attitude or a “personal buy in” requires the candidate to be committed to the organization and their overall projects. Although some companies do have activities to “reinforce the employment brand”, it is not that quick and easy. Candidates begin to do this when they first trust that the organization has their best interest in mind. When they feel that their leaders are committed to them, they begin to be committed to the organization.

Trust and commitment however do not come easily, but grow over time as a level of respect is gained between the two parties: Candidate and Organization. By solving complex problems together each gains Mutual Respect for one another. The quicker this process occurs the quicker mutual respect is achieved. This is hierarchical in nature as the graphic shows.

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