| My company is about the same size as yours, although we hire a lot of interns each summer so we've probably onboarded ~40-50 people. Here are some things I'd suggest: First off, I'd suggest that you change your stance on whether or not they should be productive on day 1 and whether or not they should be a time suck for the CEO. At a 20 person company, if the CEO isn't personally owning hiring, culture, and onboarding, then they're not doing their job. New employees are super expensive, and it's a no-brainer to invest an extra week or two of work to help set up long-term success. I'd suggest optimizing for how productive they are at ~3 months rather than on day one. For us, the first ~week is pretty much full-time onboarding. That doesn't mean they're always doing stuff (no one can absorb that much information) but it means we have a pretty defined schedule for that first week. It's a mix of the following: - General company onboarding: this is mostly me and one of the other leaders at the company telling our story, explaining our industry, talking about how most startups work and then contrasting that against how we work. Going over the employee handbook with everyone, etc. We've found that any more than an hour per day of this type of thing turns new hires into zombies, but if you spread it out (normally 4-5 hours over the first week) they find it really valuable. - Job-specific training: For developers this means getting them into the code base (we normally do a lot of pair programming the first week or two until they're up to speed). For support it means learning the product, answering sample contact forms, etc. This takes up the majority of their time. - Getting to know the team: we schedule several activities to give new hires a chance to meet each other (if more than one person starts around the same time) and the rest of the team. Their peer mentor takes them out for coffee. They play board games or darts with various members of the team just to get a chance to chat. We have company-provided lunch once per week, send them on a scavenger hunt so they get to know the area around our office, etc. - Brain breaks: starting a new job can be really stressful, and most people are too nervous to admit that they're exhausted and aren't really retaining new information anymore. I'd suggest building in at least one 30-minute block each morning and each afternoon (maybe even more than that) for them to just go off on their own and read a book, mess around online, etc. It took us a few years to refine this, and I'm sure your approach will be different. But I guess my main piece of advice is to just give up on the hope that this won't be disruptive. Whoever is primarily responsible for onboarding (ideally the CEO at first, or the new hire's direct manager once the process is worked out) should just cross off the first week on their calendar. Even if you don't know what you're doing, you can overcome almost all possible problems by just putting in face time and actually giving a shit about the person you just hired. |