Newbies

We are all about analyzing a job and the people who have that job so that we can make the best and most targeted training programs to help them succeed. One dimension you should consider as you analyze job incumbents is what a typical new person is like.

What I mean is that people come into a job with preconceptions, biases, past experience, good habits, and bad habits. Our training programs often focus on helping newcomers acclimate to a new job. This could be through organizational orientation programs or specific new hire training for that job. It pays to understand what they may typically come in with and how to best help them move towards a productive member of that job or role.

Here are a few factors to evaluate when comparing newcomers to more tenured employees.

• Average Industry or Work Experience

• Educational Level

• Technical Capabilities

• Typical Preconceptions of Work

• Bad Habits

Let’s look at the first two factors.

Average Industry or Work Experience

Depending on the job or the role, some new people can come in with zero or with tremendous amounts of experience in that industry or in that job with another organization. Knowing what the average level is can help you know how much of the “basics” to consider adding to the new employee training. For those people who take on a job with zero past experience, you may likely have to cover some of the basics and it’s dangerous to assume they come in with any knowledge of the role.

On the other hand, if you find the average new person comes in with 3, 5, or even 10 years of experience, you may consider skipping some of the basics and move more quickly to organization-specific tasks. For example, let’s look at a job of Software Developer. As you analyze the new people coming into the job, you may find, on average, they have 0-3 years of working experience as a Developer. On the other hand, they also come in with 3-5 years of experience in programming. Very rarely do they not have the basic skills of the programming language they use. They may have learned on their own or in school but for some, it’s their first job and for some it may be the next job in their career.

This tells us something about what we should focus on when training new developers as they join the organization. We likely wouldn’t have to cover much if anything regarding “how to program” but more about how someone does that work in this organization. The training should likely focus more on project and product management processes, quality standards, task management platforms, etc.

However, we should also consider that some may come in with more or less awareness of the programming language itself. The organization may hire people with less skill at junior levels and help them grow in that profession. If that is the case, you will want to consider an optional track where they can establish a foundational knowledge of the language and grow into intermediate and advanced functionality along with others already in the position.

Educational Level

The average educational level of new people can help you target your training materials so they make the most impact. Please don’t misconstrue this to mean there are smart people and dumb people. I’ve met hundreds if not thousands of very smart people who hadn’t graduated from college. Some, who have completed college, I wonder how they tie their shoes in the morning.

Anyway, moving on.

The average educational level is one way to justify where the “starting point” is for your learner. The purpose of training is to develop the skills and knowledge from Point A to Point B. Knowing where the Point A is helps you know where to start. It tells you what to include and what wouldn’t be necessary.

For example, if you find your average new person in this job has between no high-school diploma and a high-school diploma and you are developing a training program for a retail cashier. This job has several tasks requiring basic math skills including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. For that average educational level, you may choose to include training content on how to perform those calculations in their head comfortably. On the other hand, if you find your average new person in a different job has between an associates and a bachelor’s degree and you are developing a training program for a Marketing Consultant. You may find that, because of their education, they tend to come in with average or above average writing and math skills. This helps you justify not including that content in the training program and to move on focusing on other aspects they don’t already know.