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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.

Arielle Shipper (she/her) avatar
Written by Arielle Shipper (she/her)
Updated over a week 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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