Is your new job lousy?

CNN/CareerBuilder ran an interesting article over the long weekend entitled "Six signs your new job is lousy" that I liked a lot. My favorite was #2, which reads:

"You were shown to a cubicle your first day of work, given a company manual and haven't spoken to anyone since. Any good employer trains new hires during their first few days on the job. Although you might have years of experience, each company has its own procedures and expectations that you won't magically know without some instruction. From the first day, your new employer should make it clear that you have a network of support ready to help you and answer any questions."

Getting a new employee up to speed can certainly be a challenge, but any good team knows that the sooner the noob gets over the learning curve the capacity of the team will improve. Ideally, when you are ready to hire you have a training plan in place before you conduct the interviews as that's a fair set of things for the prospective employee to inquire about.

If they say, "What will I be doing the first few weeks as I learn the lay of the land?" and your answer is, "Um, er, uh . . . ." then that's a problem. A fixable one, but a problem nonetheless.

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