Page 257 - Successful Onboarding

238 • Successful Onboarding

who recruit product marketing talent if you are a consumer product com-
pany). Properly executed, onboarding can distinguish a firm in the eyes of
new hires and provide competitive advantage in recruiting this top talent.
Speaking with transfer employees from other peer organizations is a great
place to start. Some companies also choose to conduct highly detailed
peer benchmarking analyses to develop a clear differentiation strategy.
Suppose you represent Caterpillar and you are seeking engineering tal-
ent that can enable you to design a whole new tractor that is less costly or
that uses hybrid technology. In deciding which companies to benchmark
against for recruitment purposes, you might consider Toyota or other
companies looking to bring hybrid technologies, as well as other leading
engineering organizations like Lockheed Martin, GE, Intel, or Google.
Similarly, if you’re trying to bring in top MBAs, you might want to look at
how consulting firms, leading marketing companies, and top investment
banks are approaching onboarding, since these are your prime competi-
tors for talent. If you are in an industry in which your corporation hires
regional talent, then you need to look at who else is competing for that
same talent, including smaller, regional firms that at first glance would
seem to be in a different league than your own.

Opportunity identification

With a good sense of best practices and competitor practices in hand, we
now need to analyze the data so as to identify the most important oppor-
tunities and come up with recommendations. This part of the process has
several steps. First, you should conduct a quantitative analysis of the gap,
if any, between your current performance and both your desired per-
formance and external benchmarks. Such analysis should be done for
specific geographies, business units, and functions; that way, you will
understand the diverging needs and performance levels of different parts
of the organization. You will also be able to identify areas across the organ-
ization that require greater investment and prioritization. You might even
wind up deciding to focus on only one part or cross-section of the organ-
ization (for instance, one business function) so as to realize the most busi-
ness impact. Once you have determined where the gaps are and their size,
you should determine the root causes behind these gaps. This in turn