The Missing Piece in Onboarding: How Assessments Accelerate Success
In our work with clients, we provide onboarding coaching with every new hire made through our search practice. It’s a differentiator in our business, and we have seen firsthand how impactful early days coaching can be to long-term success in a position. One essential part of our coaching is the delivery of behavioral and communication assessments and debriefs.
There are so many to choose from, but at CFW Careers, we use the DISC assessment during onboarding coaching with newly hired individuals and their managers in order to understand individual communication styles. We also assess motivational drivers, level of engagement, and emotional intelligence—all of which provide invaluable insights during the first critical months in a new role.
Onboarding isn’t just about filling out forms or reviewing systems; it’s about integration into a role, team, and organization. And assessments give you a fast track to:
Self-awareness: New hires gain insight into their natural tendencies and working styles. Research on DISC shows that this kind of awareness accelerates growth and adaptation.
Clearer communication: Teams get a common language for how to approach collaboration, manage conflict, and give feedback. The DISC can help “decode” interpersonal differences so teams can focus on performance, not misfires.
Faster trust-building: Understanding each other’s strengths and blind spots early makes it easier to align around goals and expectations.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Let’s look at our favorite, the DISC assessment, and see how this tool can help managers and employees communicate more effectively right from the start:
Feedback that lands: A manager learns their new hire is a high “D” (decisive, results-oriented). Instead of softening feedback too much, they frame it in terms of outcomes and action steps—something the employee will appreciate and respond to.
Avoiding misinterpretation: A new hire who is a strong “I” (influencing, outgoing) may talk through ideas energetically. A manager who knows this style won’t mistake it for being unfocused—they’ll recognize it as part of how this employee processes and contributes.
Setting expectations clearly: An employee with a “C” style (conscientious, detail-focused) might need more specifics and data before moving forward on a project. Knowing this, their manager provides written documentation alongside verbal direction.
Reducing unnecessary tension: If a manager is fast-paced and a new hire is more methodical (“S” style: steady, thoughtful), DISC can help both understand that their different speeds aren’t a lack of effort or urgency, but simply different work preferences.
When these insights are surfaced during onboarding, both manager and employee skip months of trial and error and head straight into productive collaboration.
How to Make It Stick
Integrate it into onboarding. Have the new hire complete the assessment before or just after their first day.
Talk about it. Use results as a starting point for conversations about communication styles and expectations.
Normalize the language. Encourage managers (and ideally the full team) to complete the same assessment so everyone’s speaking from the same playbook.
Revisit it. Bring the insights back up at 30 and 60 days'; this helps ensure those lessons turn into habits.
Onboarding is your chance to set the tone—and behavior and communication assessments are a simple, research-backed way to establish healthy communication and drive cohesion from the start. Because the sooner people understand each other, the sooner they can succeed together.
Interested in using behavioral assessments in your onboarding process? Contact us for more information!
At CFW Careers, we combine the reach of global executive search with the insight of professional coaching, serving leaders and organizations. Since 1973, we’ve been committed to opening doors, creating opportunities, and helping anyone on the rise in their career not just succeed but thrive.