First-Week Onboarding Plan and FAQ
When to use it
Give a new hire a first week that answers the questions they won't ask, and their manager a list that isn't just accounts and paperwork.
The prompt
Build the first-week plan for {{Name}}, joining as {{Job Title}} on {{team}}, starting {{date}}. WORK MODEL: {{onsite / hybrid with N days / remote from where}} WHO OWNS ONBOARDING: {{manager, buddy, IT, me}} WHAT USUALLY GOES WRONG HERE: {{access takes days, the manager is away, nobody owns week one}} WHAT PRODUCTIVE LOOKS LIKE BY DAY 30: {{if the manager has said}} WHAT THEY ASKED ABOUT DURING THE PROCESS: {{...}} Give me: 1. A day-by-day plan for the first five days, with an owner named against every item. 2. What has to be done before day one, flagged by how far ahead each thing must start. 3. A first task they can genuinely finish inside week one, and why finishing something small beats reading documentation. 4. An FAQ of the fifteen questions a new joiner is too self-conscious to ask — expenses, what to wear, whether that meeting is optional, who to ask when stuck, what the acronyms mean — with a placeholder answer for me to fill in. 5. Three check-in points in the first week, who runs each, and one question each should ask. 6. What I've left off that this particular work model needs. Keep it to something a manager will actually follow, not a twenty-item programme abandoned by Wednesday.
Tip
The FAQ is the half that pays off. New hires spend their first week rationing questions they think are too small to ask, and every one of them gets answered here without anyone having to ask.
How to use it
Paste the prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or whichever assistant you use, then replace every {{bracketed}} part with your own detail. The more specific and messier your input, the better the output — a model given raw notes has more to work with than one given a tidy summary you wrote first.
More Onboarding prompts
Open the full tool for all 87 prompts, the glossary, and the JD decoder.