What should you ask a new employee in a first one-on-one meeting?

You’ve got your first one-on-one meeting with a new employee scheduled. Here are the 15 questions you should put on the one-on-one meeting agenda.

The other week, I held a one-on-one meeting with a new employee – the first I’ve conducted in a while. (We don’t hire that often at Know Your Team, so it felt a bit of a momentous occasion!) As a part of our employee onboarding process, I’d set up weekly one-on-one meetings with our new hire with the purpose of having dedicated time set aside to talk through any potential issues, uncover feedback, and discuss her overall career direction.

As I sat down to prepare for the meeting, here’s the exact one-on-one meeting agenda I wrote out and asked for her input on…

Personal connection

How’s life?
What are you excited about lately?
Anything have you worried or down lately?

Issues

When have you felt frustrated in your first 2 weeks here?
What feels unclear? (E.g., Do you feel you have enough context about the company?)
How clear is “success” for you for the next 3 months, next 6 months, and next year?
Are there any decisions you’re hung up on?
Observations about the team and/or company culture?

Feedback

Would you like more or less feedback on your work?
Would you like more or less direction from me?
How is the workload?
What aspect of your job you would like more help or coaching?
What about my management style can I improve?

Career direction

If you could be proud of one accomplishment between now and next year, what would it be?
What’s one thing we could do today to help you with your long term goals?

At the end of the one-on-one meeting, I then set aside 5 or so minutes to review takeaways and discuss next steps.

How’d the first meeting end up going? Unbelievably well. I was blown away by what I learned. (For example, I had no idea there was a personal outside-of-work issue that had been affecting our new hire!) And, I walked away with clear to-dos for myself to make certain projects more defined and to provide more support in other areas.

I’m curious: What might these 15 one-on-one meeting questions uncover for you and your new employee?

👊 Want a consistent system for preparing for ALL your one-on-one meetings (and not just ones with new hires)? Then you’ll want to peek at Know Your Team. Our One-on-Ones Tool makes it dead simple to prepare for one-on-one meetings. We give you hundreds of suggested one-on-one questions and agenda templates (just like this!) to make sure you get the most from your one-on-one meetings. Ready to try it out? Sign-up here to use the One-on-Ones Tool for free.