The Flaws in Traditional Recruitment Onboarding (And How to Fix Them)

My Sink-or-Swim Onboarding Nightmares

My first recruitment job in Old Blighty in 2002 was a baptism by fire. The onboarding philosophy? "Do this. Do that. Don’t ask questions — just do it. If you do, you’ll get results."

The guy who started with me quit on Day 3. Over the next six months, senior recruiters placed bets on which rookie would drop out next. Turnover was staggering.

Managers ruled with an iron fist. Stray from the script? Punishment followed. Once, I sent a client a CV for review — an act not in the rulebook. My sentence? Wearing a sign around my neck: "I’m the CV-sending fella, who wants a Stella?" My crime cost me a round of pints for the whole office.

The Problem? This approach crushed curiosity. Talented employees weren’t allowed to question, improvise, or innovate — just obey. No one explained why certain tasks mattered or how they drove success.

The Opposite Extreme: No Guidance at All

Years later, back in Australia, I faced a different but equally flawed onboarding style: "Figure it out yourself."

My boss’s "training" consisted of: "Just cold-call companies and reverse-market candidates. OK, off you go!"

I had no idea what I was doing let alone how to be successful — and neither did my peers. Managers only checked in at month-end to ask, "Where are the placements?" and praised the scoreboard, though no one knew quite how to score. Asking for help made me feel like a burden. Half of my intake quit within probation.

The Problem? No structure, no playbook, no real guidance. Success depended entirely on the employee’s ability to self-teach — a gamble most new hires lose.

Two Extremes, One Big Failure

Both approaches — one overly rigid and the other dangerously vague — still plague agencies today.

• The first stifles innovation by enforcing blind compliance.

• The second abandons new hires, expecting them to magically "get it."

Yet salaries are the biggest cost in any agency. Why do so many firms invest so little in setting new hires up for success?

Sure, resource constraints vary from agency to agency — but even so, all the money in the world doesn’t fix bad onboarding. That’s why I built Zinger: a smarter, ROI-driven way to train recruiters from Day 1.

How to Get It Right

✅ No more sink-or-swim – Programmatic learning based on anchor themes, beats chaos or dictatorship. Don't challenge your team to be successful, get in behind them. The "Goldilocks" zone is where you provide enough guidance but still let your team interpret the grey areas.

✅ Explain the "Why" – Employees don’t resist hard work; they resist work that feels pointless. They thrive when they understand how their actions impact progress and success.

✅ Invest in smart onboarding and upskilling – High turnover is far more expensive than training. But equally, over-investing in training (thinking this is the panacea), risks over-complicating things and can lead to analysis paralysis. Keep it simple - 80% of the learning in recruitment comes from doing the job itself.

The bottom line? Bad onboarding isn’t just outdated — it’s expensive. Time for a better way. 🚀