BusinessWeek has their Best Places to Launch a Career issue out and the gold I mined is a mention of Why New Grads Love Cisco. The reason I love this is because Cisco has changed the game.

According to the article, 2,500 Recent college grads have gone through an onboarding process at Cisco since 2006. It's like a fraternity/sorority rush rather than the typical hiring process because the new hires choose their manager. 98% are still at Cisco after 2 years. Compare this to BW's #1 pick - Deloitte, who loses 50% in three years...

Cisco's approach is a great idea that may lead you to change parts of your onboarding process so you can increase intern and new employee productivity and retention. Although this article refers to Gen Y'ers, the benefits should apply to all types of new hires.

Meeting Ideas

Gen Y What? is about considering ways to do an extreme makeover of your intern or new hire onboarding process. "Onboarding" is the steps a new hire goes through to begin work at your company.

Here are some potential questions for your next staff meeting to challenge your people to consider how to improve your onboarding process:

• What is the most disappointing part of our onboarding process? What can be done to improve it?

• What is the best part of our onboarding process? How can we make it even better, or at least extend it?

• What part of the Cisco onboarding process could we implement at our company?

• How can we cut the time it takes for someone to be fully productive by 25-50%?