First days matter. Whether it’s a new hire walking into their welcome team meeting or navigating your tech stack for the first time, the onboarding experience can shape how someone feels about your company and their role there. But let’s be honest, most onboarding programs follow a pretty generic path. A couple of intros, some compliance training, and a starting up to-do list to get through are all standard practice. That might cover the basics, but it doesn’t set anyone up to thrive.
What if you could build onboarding plans that are actually tailored to how someone works, learns, and communicates best? With insight from assessment results, you can.
No two people learn or adapt in exactly the same way. Some new hires want to hit the ground running with autonomy. Others need more structure and clarity to feel confident. When you already have access to behavioral data from the hiring process, you don’t need to guess. You can take what you’ve learned about your new hire’s temperament and learning preferences and use it to design an onboarding experience that works for them.
If personalized onboarding is so important, where should you start? Well the good news is if you use McQuaig to hire, you already have plenty of information to leverage. The McQuaig Word Survey, often used during the hiring process, gives you a reliable snapshot of a new hire’s natural tendencies. It captures key traits like communication style, decision-making preferences, pace, and how someone responds under pressure. This gives managers a head start on how to support and engage each employee once they join the team.
For example, if someone is highly independent, their onboarding plan might include more self-directed tasks early on. If they’re naturally collaborative, it makes sense to schedule early meetings with key teammates or mentors. The survey helps you tailor the experience in practical ways that make a big difference.
The Word Survey also supports better self-awareness. Sharing and debriefing results with the new hire can spark conversations about how they work best and what they need to succeed. That kind of transparency fosters trust and sets the tone for open communication right from day one.
Read More: Why is onboarding so critical for HR?
But it's not just the Word Survey that can help you plan the right onboarding approach for the right person. Integrating a new hire into a team is just as important as one-on-one support. That’s where TeamSync comes in. By comparing the behavioral styles of everyone on the team, you can get a clear picture of group strengths, gaps, and potential friction points.
TeamSync shows you how a new employee’s traits complement or contrast with their peers. It also includes a “Working Together Playbook” that offers actionable tips to help the team and manager build stronger working relationships right away. This means less awkwardness and more connection from the start.
Once you have some assessment results to work with, McQuaig Maven helps you turn them into action. Our AI assistant can generate personalized onboarding plans that reflect each individual’s working style. You’ll get suggestions on how to structure early tasks, communicate effectively, and build trust quickly.
Maven also equips managers with coaching guidance, providing tips on how to support and motivate a new team member based on their unique behavioral profile. If questions come up, like how a person might handle feedback or collaboration, managers can ask Maven directly and receive practical, data-driven answers in seconds. By building an onboarding plan with Maven support, not only are you leveraging the assessment data you've collected, but you can also interact with Maven to answer questions, give advice, and help you map out the best way to build rapport. Take the guesswork out of onboarding with a little help from AI.
Read More: Build a better coaching strategy with these tips
Now that we've covered some key McQuaig tools that help support onboarding, let's dive in even further. Here are a few examples of how you can turn assessment data into practical onboarding steps:
Instead of sending managers a generic welcome template, give them a short summary of their new hire’s Word Survey profile. Include coaching tips, communication preferences, and early motivators. This helps them lead with empathy and intention. You can even ask Maven to make such a summary, freeing up HR time for other tasks.
Someone who prefers structure may benefit from clear daily plans and written resources. Someone who thrives on autonomy might prefer starting with hands-on projects or exploratory work. Use what you know about your new hire to pace the first few weeks accordingly.
TeamSync’s playbooks are a great tool for kicking off conversations around how teammates like to collaborate. It encourages mutual understanding and sets the tone for respectful, productive relationships.
If someone prefers direct feedback, don’t sugarcoat it. If they’re more reserved, make space for reflection. Tailoring your approach early helps build trust and confidence.
Personalized onboarding isn’t just a nice gesture. It creates a foundation for long-term success. When new hires feel supported in ways that align with who they are, they’re more likely to engage, perform, and stay.
With McQuaig’s Word Survey, McQuaig Maven, and TeamSync, you can offer a more thoughtful, tailored onboarding experience without adding complexity to your process. It’s the kind of strategic support that benefits your people, your managers, and your culture.