Rapid Onboarding with Speed and Scale

Context is everything. When you’re swimming in the ocean and see a fin sticking out of the water, your brain concludes: "It's a shark, get out of the water!" But if you're in a pool, you think: "It's a kid with a swim toy that looks like a shark fin." In both situations, the context leads you to reach two very different conclusions and behavioral responses.

How people behave in any given situation is a function of both who they are as individuals (e.g., their personality, skills, past experiences) and the context in which the behavior takes place (e.g., the situation itself). In other words, context matters, and it is difficult to interpret an individual’s behavior without an understanding of the context they faced.

When it comes to using assessments during the hiring process, organizations have a vested interest in making certain that these assessments reflect the organization and job – the context. Doing so helps jumpstart onboarding by ensuring that candidates' assumptions about the organization, the job, and their suitability for both – that they invariably make during the recruiting process – are rooted in reality.

But assessments modeled after the organization and job are superior for another reason: They are generally stronger than generic assessments that cut across job type, level, organization, industry, etc.

1. More predictive. First and foremost, the closer the alignment between the assessment and the specific context in which the individual will ultimately perform (i.e., the job at the organization), the better the assessment will do in predicting future job performance. In fact, research demonstrates that highly contextualized assessments have incremental predictive validity beyond situational judgment and job knowledge assessments. This means that even after measuring candidates' job-relevant knowledge and how they would handle particular situations, highly contextualized assessments still reveal candidates' ability to perform the job that we don’t otherwise know from these other tools.

Why is this true? Because the best predictor of future behavior is past performance. For many years, this adage has been dubbed "the Golden Rule of selection." Think about it: What's the best way to predict whether an individual will be a good salesperson at your organization in the future? Answer: Observe them in the job of salesperson at your organization. The only problem in the pre-employment context, however, is that you cannot observe a candidate perform a job they do not have… Or can you?

Assessments designed to reflect the realities of an organization and job often take the form of a simulation – sometimes completely automated; other times involving role plays conducted by trained assessors. In essence, these assessments let candidates "try the job on for size" – explore the situations and challenges faced, engage in dealing with the situations, etc. Such work samples provide the opportunity to, in essence, perform a job that candidates do not yet have, thus enabling conclusions about how they would perform the job if hired.

2. Less adverse impact. Not only are highly contextualized assessments, such as simulations, highly predictive of future job success, but they also have lower risk of adverse impact. In fact, a seminal meta-analytic research study – looking across many years of other research studies – found that simulations comprising role-plays or presentations have about 50 percent less risk of adverse impact (i.e., sub-group differences) compared to other assessment tools. This decreased risk of adverse impact translates into a more diverse group of candidates deemed qualified for the job, ultimately leading to a more diverse workforce.
3. Higher face validity. Finally, because highly contextualized assessments look like the job, candidates see the relevance of these assessments for the job to which they've applied. Candidates understand why you are asking them to perform some task or answer particular questions because the assessments make sense in their minds given what they know about the job. This is known as face validity, which highly benefits the organization. This underlying concept can decrease the risk of candidates challenging the results of an assessment, improve perceptions and impressions of the employing organization, and increase job offers acceptance rates.

All three areas of highly contextualized assessments are paramount on their own, and together highlight the importance of tailoring pre-employment assessments to the organization and job. They serve the dual purpose of teaching candidates about the job, while also assessing their capabilities and alignment with the organization's needs.

The employment decision is important for both the candidate and the employer, and it benefits both parties to ensure that candidates are assessed in an accurate and authentic manner to make the best, most informed decisions possible.

The conversation around mobile learning has changed in recent years. Once viewed as merely a technical consideration (i.e., making sure training “works” on mobile devices), organizations now recognize mobile learning’s unique potential. The cadence of mobile learning is perfectly aligned with contemporary learners’ needs, and whether the method used is microlearning, spaced learning, learning journeys, continuous learning cultures, or personalized learning, organizations are delivering more value.However, in the new era of mobile learning, many organizations struggle with where to start. Best-in-class organizations use a shift to mobile as a way to rethink their learning strategy, rather than simply update a mode of delivery. Here are a few real-life examples.

1. Onboarding
   ‍Mobile learning proves particularly effective as an onboarding tool in deskless environments such as retail, in-field technical support, and safety. For example, one global coffee retailer, challenged with rapid scalability in emerging markets, uses mobile deployment to streamline competency formation for its newly hired baristas, ensuring a consistent brand experience.Additionally, mobile learning promotes a more journey-driven approach to onboarding, taking the pressure off single-event training. Employees now have a tool in their pocket that provides gradual reinforcement, helping them recall hundreds of espresso drink combinations in the moment.Adaptive retrieval practices also help support the onboarding journey in the initial phases of the baristas’ tenure. Push notifications remind baristas to continue working on their skills, while weekly challenges, mini-games, and leaderboards help sustain engagement. Flashcards (featuring information such as the right syrup ratios for customized drinks), are self-paced reference tools, which they can use in the moment of need.

2. Upskilling
   ‍A Canadian financial services advisory organization required a radical approach to reach its unique target audience: entrepreneurs. Familiar with entrepreneurs’ resistance to standard training modalities, the organization created a mobile solution with a new learning cadence customized for its ever-distracted, highly-resistant learners, replacing large-format, single-event courseware with quick lessons (of no more than five minutes each), ongoing knowledge checks, personalized learning paths, and a strong resource library for ongoing performance support. The organization can now meet its entrepreneurial customers’ individual learning needs

2. Sales
   ‍Mobile learning is proving to be a differentiator for delivering content to sales teams. For a major global automotive company, mobile learning enables its salespeople on the floor to keep up with sophisticated customers who walk into showrooms fluent in specific car models, pricing, and competitive offerings. Mobile learning helps the salespeople stay agile, providing product information updates and timely needs-based support through an adaptive learning engine.Even augmented reality plays a role in creating intuitive and quick access to content within a high-context environment: sales reps can point their phone to a new model on the showroom floor and immediately see information on specific aspects of the car. Off the floor, they can refresh their knowledge by completing retrieval practices, reviewing key selling scenarios through immersive interactive challenges, and consulting with mobile-friendly job aids prior to their next customer interaction. For this organization’s salespeople, mobile learning is indispensable when it comes to keeping up with customers.

Mobile learning is an effective training delivery platform in these examples and beyond. Successful organizations see the potential for mobile as a platform, rather than as a technology wrapper, and take a unique approach to its design. If you’re looking to make a bold statement and revolutionize training, leverage mobile learning as the catalyst.

Onboarding new employees into the organization is a critical step in the employment lifecycle.

Without proper onboarding, newcomers run the risk of failing to:

• Learn how the organization operates
• Identify how best to perform their job and help the organization achieve its objectives
• Engage with their new team

So when does onboarding start?

It's not uncommon for organizations to think of onboarding as kicking off on the first day of employment. Afterall, that's when employees receive their computer, email account, access to company information, and perhaps even meet their team for the first time, among many other things.

In reality, onboarding new employees starts long before their first day on the job. It actually starts when they apply for the job, and sometimes even earlier depending on what is publicized about the organization and role.

Throughout the hiring process, candidates begin to form impressions of what life in the organization and job will be like. Does your hiring process and all its components teach candidates about the role and life in the organization?

If not, imagine the possibilities if you could jumpstart the onboarding process by harnessing this time that you have with future employees. Not only could time to proficiency decrease, but retention could also increase because candidates are better informed about life in the organization and role.

What does this actually look like? Here are four elements that should be factored into every hiring process at every organization:

1. ‍An engaging experience that keeps candidates…well…engaged. The objective of the talent acquisition process is to identify, screen, assess, and select candidates, not to entertain them. But that doesn't mean that the process should be as exciting as a root canal, either.
   
   With appropriately designed assessments and interviews (conducted by properly trained interviewers, of course) the talent acquisition process can and should be engaging. Just like eLearning, people should feel good about the time that they spend going through the process—they should feel like it was time well-spent.
   
   And once you have candidates engaged, keep them engaged (often referred to as “warm”) through regular communication. There is little worse for a candidate than wondering where they are in the process, whether the organization has ruled them out, or when a decision will be made.
   
   You want candidates to be excited about the prospect of working for your organization, as this excitement turns into increased job offer acceptance rates as well as increased engagement and performance once on the job.
2. ‍An appropriately rigorous process. This is a balance, and a bit like the British fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The process can't be so rigorous that it dies under its own weight, nor can it be so light that it lacks utility.
   
   What do these two scenarios tell the candidate? The former scenario tells the candidate that the organization overengineers things and makes them more complicated than they need to be—that doesn't sound very fun (unless you also like to overengineer things).
   
   The latter scenario tells the candidate that the organization spends time on things with very little impact—also not good. Instead, Goldilocks likes a process that is just right.
   
   This, of course, depends on the role itself. Candidates for an entry-level role will likely be put off by a lengthy process with numerous steps, whereas candidates for a senior-level role will likely feel unheard by an extremely brief process that consists of a single interview. Instead, align the level of rigor to the role, and make certain that the process conveys the right message to candidates.
3. ‍Assessments modeled after the job and organization. This is perhaps the hardest element to incorporate, but it's also one of the most critical. If you want to know whether a candidate will be able to learn a procedure to produce widgets, the best way to assess this is to put them in a situation where they have to learn a procedure to produce widgets.
   
   Of course, asking them about times when they had to learn something new or administering an assessment of learning ability would both be informative, but nothing will be as informative as having them demonstrate their ability to perform the job.And guess what else this does—it teaches the candidate about the job. The candidate walks away from the hiring process knowing exactly what the job will entail and how closely the job aligns with what the candidate wants.
   
   Granted, most employees will not be hired to produce widgets and instead hired to make decisions, lead others, develop new products, advise customers, etc. These kinds of roles are a bit harder to emulate in the hiring process, but it can still be done.
   
   And the benefits to predicting future job success, reducing time to proficiency, and reducing turnover are well-worth the time and energy to get it right.
4. ‍On-brand messaging. Finally, the hiring process and all of its steps should convey the message about the organization that the organization wants to convey.A tech company, for example, should not have a paper-based application process—what would that say to candidates? An organization that prides itself on having a warm and inviting culture should not have a cold and sterile process—recruiters and interviewers should be warm, assessments should be welcoming rather than intimidating.

The point is that throughout the entire hiring process, candidates piece together what they think is true about the organization and job. When this picture is accurate, the organization and candidate both win. When the picture is inaccurate, no one wins.

It’s no secret that talent acquisition is a mission-critical piece of the employment lifecycle, but it can be used as more than just as a selection tool. By reviewing the process, engagement, messaging, and implementing the proper assessments, your organization can gain more than just a great hire—you’ll get one who is excited, eager and enthusiastic to advance both the culture and the business.

Organizations have long wanted to scale coaching, but have been limited by cost and capacity. With AI, that's beginning to change as new platforms make coaching more accessible, flexible, and available on demand, extending support beyond a select group of leaders to entire populations.

For talent leaders, this shift creates both opportunity and complexity. With greater reach comes a new set of trade-offs: how to balance access with depth, flexibility with accountability, and efficiency with meaningful development.

The limits of unlimited (coaching).

Unlimited coaching sounds like the obvious answer. Remove the barriers, give everyone access, let people engage on their own terms. What's not to like?

In practice, quite a bit.

When coaching has no defined structure or cadence, engagement tends to become episodic - people show up when something feels urgent and step back when it doesn't. The coaching relationship never quite deepens. Conversations cover ground but don't build on it. And the development that was supposed to happen keeps getting pushed to the next session, and the next.

Three patterns emerge:

1.  Sporadic engagement over sustained development. Without a rhythm to anchor the work, coaching becomes reactive. Clients bring whatever is most pressing that week rather than working toward something larger. Progress happens in bursts, if at all.
2. ‍Insights that don't compound. Great coaching reveals patterns over time - things a client can't see in one session but can't unsee after several. Without continuity, and without a consistent coaching relationship to hold the thread, each conversation starts close to zero.‍
3. Outcomes that are hard to measure. No milestones. No defined endpoint. No clear way for the organization, or the client, to know whether it's working. Activity fills the gap where impact should be.

The result is a model that's easy to scale and hard to defend. Which is exactly the problem talent leaders are navigating right now.

The relationship is the lever.

Decades of research into what makes coaching work keeps arriving at the same answer: it's the relationship. Not the platform, not the methodology. The relationship.

When a coach and client build trust over time, developing shared language, and returning to the same themes with increasing depth, something shifts. Conversations get more honest. Insights stick. The client starts doing the work between sessions, not just during them. That's when coaching becomes genuinely transformative, and it can't be rushed or replicated in a one-off session.

The ICF and EMCC are clear on this: continuity is what dives outcomes. The coaching engagements that produce lasting change are the ones where each session builds on the last, not the ones that simply offer more access.

Three principles make that possible: Consistency, Continuity, and Completion.

1. Consistency

The foundation everything else is built on.

The temptation when designing a coaching program is to treat flexibility as a feature - let people book when they want, swap coaches freely, engage on their own schedule. But frequent coach changes reset the clock. Every new coach has to earn trust, learn context, and find their footing with the client. That's time spent getting started, not getting somewhere.

A stable coaching relationship works differently:

• The coach starts to see around corners, uncovering patterns the client can't see on their own
• The client stops performing and starts being honest
• The relationship itself becomes a source of accountability, not just the sessions

Consistency doesn't constrain the work. It's what makes the deeper work possible.

2. Continuity

What turns a series of sessions into genuine development.

Without continuity, coaching tends to be additive at best- each session offers something useful, but nothing compounds. With it, the work builds on itself in ways that can't happen in isolated conversations.

What continuity makes possible:

• A limiting belief surfaced in session three becomes a thread that runs through the rest of the engagement
• A behavioral pattern the client couldn't see at the start becomes impossible to ignore by the end
• Space opens up for the harder work - the kind that requires sitting with discomfort across multiple sessions, not resolving it quickly and moving on

That slower, deeper work is where lasting change actually happens. It doesn't come from more sessions. It comes from the right sessions, in the right order, with the same person.

3. Completion

The most underrated principle of the three.

In a world of unlimited access, there's no finish line, and without one, it's surprisingly hard to know what you're working toward, or whether you've gotten there. A defined endpoint changes the entire shape of an engagement.‍

A clear endpoint creates urgency and focuses every session on what matters most.

• Shifts the question from "what should we talk about this week?" to "what do we need to accomplish before we're done?"
• Gives both coach and client a body of work to look back on, not just a log of conversations

For talent leaders, this is also what makes coaching legible as an investment. Sessions logged is an activity metric. A cohort of leaders who completed a structured engagement and can articulate what changed, that's a result.

Don't just scale it, design it (here’s how)‍ 

The opportunity in front of talent leaders right now is significant. The organizations that will get the most from this moment are the ones that treat coaching design as seriously as coaching delivery.

Practical design decisions:

• Define the arc before you launch: set the number of sessions, the cadence, and the goals upfront, not after people have already started booking
• Protect the coaching relationship: Make coach switching the exception, not the default, and design your program to discourage unnecessary re-matches
• Build in milestones: create structured check-ins at the midpoint and end of each engagement so progress is visible to both the coach and the organization ‍
• Separate on-demand support from developmental coaching: Use AI-enabled tools for in-the-moment guidance, and reserve structured engagements for the deeper work ‍
• Measure completion, not just activation: Track how many people finish an engagement, not just how many start one

Questions to pressure-test your design:

• Does every participant know what they're working toward before their first session?
• Can your coaches see enough context about a client's journey to pick up where they left off?
• Would you be able to show, at the end of a cohort, what changed, and for whom?

Access opened the door. Intention is what makes it worth walking through.

Three decisions that changed everything.

Two years ago, we made three deliberate decisions about how BTS would move with Applied AI.

We would become our own Customer Zero.

While others were building strategies, defining governance, and waiting for clarity, we made a different call: we decided not to wait. Not because the stakes were low, but because they were high. And because in a space evolving this quickly, clarity wouldn’t come from planning. It would come from movement.

So instead of starting with a roadmap, we started with three principles:

1. No top-down mandate. The people closest to the work figure it out.
2. IT must evolve from gatekeeper to enabler - leading AI trials and fast experimentation.
3. Don’t wait for certainty.

We set the organization in motion, and once we did, things started to move quickly.

What if we started this company today?

Waiting for certainty is itself a choice, and it’s costing companies more than they realize.

We started where we knew the work best: our simulations. No perfect plan, just teams moving, trying, and iterating.

Simulations are core to who we are at BTS. Companies that simulate don’t just make better decisions; they execute faster and build more engaged cultures.

The team asked a simple question:

"What if we were to start our company today?”

That question started the flywheel.

They asked IT for a few licenses and started building - vibe-coding, writing agents, and testing tools - moving at a pace that would make any VC-backed start-up smile.

The messy middle.

At first, the team was underwhelmed._‍

The early reports were blunt:

“Not good with math.”

“Poor graph capabilities.”

The team wasn't discouraged. They kept tinkering - jumping between tools, staying on top of new releases, experimenting constantly.

This was a small team, across 24 countries, building off each other’s ideas. Laughing at crazy creations. Breaking things. Iterating in a sandbox alongside real clientwork.

Each cycle produced something:

• A sharper scenario
• A faster build
• A more powerful simulation

The flywheel was turning, and it was generating something real.

When the diamond appeared.

Then something shifted.

The team moved into client trials across five countries. They figured out ISO compliance and built the architecture to handle the complexity, the “spaghetti.”

And what emerged wasn’t incremental:

• What used to take weeks started happening in days.
• Limited creativity started to feel like unlimited innovation.
• Clients became self-serving.
• Agentic simulations were built directly into client systems for real-time updates and preparation.

This was our first AI diamond - a high-impact outcome created by many cycles of experimentation compounding into real value.

It only appeared because we kept the flywheel turning, each cycle increasing the odds that something would break through.

95% adoption in eight weeks.

Then it was time to take the AI diamond global.

BTS is decentralized and highly entrepreneurial. We operate across 24 countries and 38 offices, where local teams have real autonomy.

And historically? That’s meant a low appetite for adopting something built somewhere else and pushed from the center.

So we expected resistance.

Instead, something surprising happened.

In the first eight weeks, we saw 95% adoption across our global footprint.

It felt completely different from our own digital initiatives, ERP implementations, top-down rollouts of the past.

This moved on its own. Why? 

We realized it didn’t start with a framework or a model, it started with a feeling.

The feeling of being at the leading edge of one’s craft and profession.

• Joy
• Excitement
• Pride

As we watched this play out across teams it stopped feeling like isolated wins.

There was a pattern to it. A repeatable, organic, innovation motion.

And the flywheel didn’t stop with simulations.

It spread across finance, sales enablement, legal, operations, and client delivery. Some cycles led to small improvements, and others revealed new diamonds.

Not becausewe planned for them, but because we built the conditions for people to find them.

The question I'd ask any CEO right now: Is your flywheel turning, or are you still waiting for the perfect plan?

In part 2, I’ll share the key success factors behind the breakthrough, and what we’re now seeing across more than 120 global clients.

‍

La maggior parte delle riunioni di vendita non fallisce.
Semplicemente non porta a una decisione.

Ed è lì che si perde valore.

I clienti di oggi sono più informati, più selettivi e hanno meno tempo.
Non hanno bisogno di altre presentazioni di prodotto.
‍
Hanno bisogno di conversazioni che li aiutino a stabilire le priorità, decidere e andare avanti.

Eppure, il 58% delle riunioni di vendita non riesce a creare valore reale.
Non perché i venditori manchino di capacità, ma perché le conversazioni non sono progettate per far avanzare le decisioni.

“I clienti non agiscono su ogni esigenza che riconoscono.
Agiscono quando qualcosa diventa una priorità.”

In questo breve executive brief scoprirai:

• Perché la maggior parte delle conversazioni informa… ma non porta all’azione
• Cosa spinge davvero i clienti a stabilire priorità e muoversi
• Come creare urgenza senza compromettere la fiducia
• Il passaggio dal presentare soluzioni al facilitare decisioni
• Cosa distingue le conversazioni che si bloccano da quelle che accelerano il progresso

Se i tuoi team stanno affrontando trattative bloccate, decisioni ritardate o un pipeline lento, questo brief ti aiuterà a capire il perché e cosa fare in modo diverso.

Scarica l’executive brief e scopri come progettare conversazioni che portano davvero a decisioni.