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How To: Offer Job Shadowing to New Hires

Job shadow sessions help new hires ramp quickly. Set up your program in 10 minutes or less.

Carrie Biggar avatar
Written by Carrie Biggar
Updated over a year ago

Job shadowing is a great opportunity for new hires to get hands-on experience learning their new role, or to get a higher-level view of what other departments at the company do. Even better: it gives peers an opportunity to demonstrate their skills, and forms valuable connections that both new hires and tenured employees can lean on in the future.

💡Don't just take our word for it: ADP recommends job shadowing, and has a framework for creating a program.

How to Set Up a Job Shadowing Program in Donut

If your team is not yet enabled for Premium:

  1. If your team isn't yet enabled for Premium, start your 14-day free trial.

  2. Follow the Wizard prompts to create your first general onboarding template.

  3. Create a second, role-specific template (ex: Marketing at Acme).

  4. Confused? We have more info on Premium templates right this way.

If your team is already enabled for Premium:

  1. Log into your account, and hit Premium in the left nav.

  2. Select a role-specific template or create a new one (ex: Marketing at Acme).

Either Way:

  1. Create a new message on the date you'd like the first job shadow introduction to be made.

  2. Create a new role as the recipient of the message (ex: Email Marketing Shadow).

  3. Select message type Intro, and select New Hire as the introduction recipient. Add in the text of the introductory mess (ex: Hi @{New Hire}! Meet your job shadow partner @{Email Marketing Shadow}! You two should find a time to meet.) Hit Create once you're done.

  4. Add as many job shadow introductions to the template as you'd like. Create a new role for each introduction (ex: Job Shadow 2 or Social Media Job Shadow).

  5. Be sure to customize your settings for how each job shadow role is chosen. You can assign the job shadow partner(s) yourself, you can prompt a manager or another point person to select the job shadow partner(s) via direct message in Slack, or you can choose job shadow partner(s) randomly from a Slack channel.

Don't forget to add new hires via the New Hires tab so that your job shadow program can start working its magic!


❓If you have any questions or feedback, click the purple Donut button on the bottom right of your screen to open up a chat with our support team!

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