Your Onboarding is a Dress Rehearsal for Your Next Job
The first impression is the real one, revealing a company’s true values.
The hum is the first thing you notice. Not the people, not the art on the walls they mentioned in the interview, but the low, monotonous drone of the server room down the hall. Your desk is particle board and cold laminate. There’s a stapler with no staples, a phone that isn’t plugged in, and an impressive amount of dust. This is it. Day one.
Someone from HR, whose name you’ve already forgotten, drops a folder on the desk. “Your laptop should be ready in a day or two,” she says, avoiding eye contact. “IT has a backlog of 48 tickets. In the meantime, you can review our culture deck. It’s all in there.” The folder contains a printout of a 108-slide presentation last updated in 2018. Slide 8 declares, “We are a fast-paced, agile, people-first organization.”
Cognitive Dissonance
The truth is immediate and physical.
The cognitive dissonance is immediate and physical. You feel it in your gut. Nothing about this experience is fast, agile, or people-first. It’s slow, rigid, and deeply impersonal. This isn’t a minor administrative hiccup. This is the truth. This is the most honest thing the company will ever tell you.
We love to
