How do you train a career changer quickly so that he or she can hit the ground running once he or she is hired? Here are 3 tips.
How do you train a career changer quickly so that he or she can hit the ground running once he or she is hired? Here are 3 tips.
Have you successfully filled a vacant position with a career changer? First of all, congratulations! Now it is also important that the new employee contributes to the company's success and quickly copes with the tasks at hand. It is not uncommon for specialist departments to put pressure on employees and look at career changers particularly critically. We present three tips on how to quickly train career changers.
The first step is to draw up an onboarding plan that takes into account the previously analyzed strengths and weaknesses of the career changer. Suitable colleagues must be identified for an onboarding team that will take on the mentoring. These employees should not only have the technical know-how, but also the necessary attentiveness and patience that is needed to train a career changer.
In addition, the importance of Onboarding clearly communicated: This is a task that is crucial to success and cannot be done "on the side". Of course, colleagues must be given the space and time to complete this task.
The onboarding team should also be prepared for the fact that newcomers will question established processes with their fresh perspective. Open ears and a certain degree of flexibility are needed in order to be able to benefit from these new perspectives - even during the induction phase.
One thing is clear: training and further education are of key importance for a successful career change. External experts or experienced colleagues can impart the necessary knowledge in workshops and seminars. In some industries there are also special offers that are geared towards rapid learning success, for example boot camps and hackathons in the IT sector.
Nowadays, digital remote solutions are increasingly in demand, for example in the form of webinars. It is important that personal exchange is not neglected: additional communication channels can ensure that fixed contact persons are available and questions can be asked at any time, even at short notice.
In addition to traditional offline and online courses, self-learning processes can also be encouraged, for example by providing an e-learning platform.
Also interesting: Career changers as a solution to the shortage of skilled workers?
What is going well and what is going badly when onboarding the new employee? In which areas is there still a need for training? This can be found out through regular feedback loops. The onboarding team should ideally sit down with the new employee in feedback sessions that take place every one or two weeks.
If it turns out that the induction is not going as hoped, you should start optimizing the onboarding program. This also requires self-criticism: Does the mentoring team really get enough time to be able to provide comprehensive support to the newcomer during onboarding? Were the training options selected appropriately, or do investments need to be made in additional or different, possibly more efficient induction tools? Or is the problem an overload of new knowledge in too short a time, which simply overwhelms the new employee? The sooner such questions are asked, the more time there is for optimization.
If the optimization processes do not work and the onboarding effort gets out of hand, a conversation with the career changer must be sought. If no mutual solution can be found, the only option is to separate. But that is what probationary periods are for - even with conventional candidates who are not career changers, there is a risk that they will not survive this phase.
We see that whether a career change is successful is closely linked to how good the onboarding is. The company must be prepared to spend financial resources on suitable training courses and give the mentors the space to prepare for the career changer so that, as "old hands", they can best impart the missing know-how and carefully counteract any uncertainties that arise.
(Cover image source: Monkey Business Images – Shutterstock.com)
