Ensuring Hiring Success Utilizing Onboarding

Offer, acceptance and start date are only intermediary steps in securing a successful hire. To foster a successful and effective hire, onboarding is essential for integrating new talent into your management team and boosting organizational productivity. Let’s consider some numbers. 📊

With 25+ years placing CPAs and finance leaders, I’ve seen firsthand that stellar onboarding can glue talent to firms, while weak starts can cause early turnover. A 2025 AIHR report nails it: strong onboarding lifts new hire retention by 82% and productivity by 70% (AIHR, 2025). Flip that—23% of new hires jump ship within a year if it’s botched (BuildEmpire, 2025). A new executive/employee’s first days matter. 📌

For new hires at the exec level, the stakes soar. The process of replacing a CFO or Controller isn’t cheap—Applauz research finds that replacing C-level executives may cost up to 213% of their salary, so a $150,000 exec costs $319,500 to replace (Applauz, 2025). Salary(dot)com also found that replacing an exec can cost up to $300,000+ (Salary(dot)com, 2024). 💰

Why? Recruitment cost, lost deals, lost productivity and ramp-up time. Not to mention the cost of fixing any damage done by an unsuccessful hire. StrongDM’s 2025 data shows 79% of employees tie onboarding to grasping culture, while 81% feel swamped by situations where there are poor or no rollout plans (StrongDM, 2025). 💼

The upside is clear: 69% of employees stick around three years with great onboarding (BuildEmpire, 2025). For any new executive or professional, a structured launch—mentorship, MBO’s, milestones, goals and clear target KPIs—spark impact and engagement. A poor or nonexistent onboarding process doubles the risk of failure. 🚀

So, if your firm is hiring a key team member or exec, onboarding is your leverage. Sure, tech applications like ATS cuts hiring time by 30% (Recruiterflow, 2025), but it’s the human touch—connection, clarity—that locks in talent. Want key hires to stay? Let’s build your process. 👷🏻‍♂️

#warfortalent #onboarding #hiringprocess #recruiting