Why new hires seem less prepared, and how to get them ready
Many new hires are arriving without the experience their roles assume they already have.
In Deloitte's 2025 Global Human Capital Trends, 66 percent of managers and executives said most recent hires were not fully prepared. Lack of experience was the most common reason they gave.
The person may be capable. They just were not given enough chances to practice the work before being hired to do it independently.
Some larger organizations can absorb that. They may have a deeper bench, dedicated learning support, or a longer ramp period. A smaller company usually has less room. One person who cannot operate yet represents a larger share of the team, and the founder or most senior operator often becomes the trainer by default.
This piece covers what “not ready” means, why experience is becoming harder to build, why the problem hits smaller teams harder, and what to do when you do not have an enterprise training budget.
What makes a new hire "not ready"?
Not ready does not automatically mean the wrong person.
It usually means the role expects experience the hire never had a reasonable chance to build. Deloitte identified this as a growing organizational problem. As entry-level work and informal apprenticeship opportunities decline, people are being asked to operate independently without first getting enough supervised practice.
This is different from lacking information.
Someone can hold the right degree, certification, and technical knowledge while still struggling to make decisions in a live situation. They may know the process but not recognize when to deviate from it. They may understand the task but not yet know what good judgment looks like when the answer is unclear.
The only way you build it is by doing the work, seeing how experienced people handle it, receiving feedback, and doing it again.
Why are recent hires less prepared than they used to be?
Because the routes people once used to build experience are narrowing.
Routine work is increasingly automated, outsourced, or removed from junior roles. Teams have become leaner, and managers have less time to coach. Deloitte points to AI shrinking entry-level work as a core driver.
AI is part of this, but it is not the entire explanation. When the simpler work disappears, the first job available may already require judgment that used to take several years to develop.
Both new workers and career changers get caught in the same problem. Employers ask for experience, but fewer roles exist where that experience can be built.
In the same research, just 48 percent of respondents said the problem is very or critically important. Fewer than half the people positioned to fix it rate it as urgent.
Deloitte also found that 73 percent of executives and 72 percent of workers agree organizations should do more to connect people with chances to build experience. There is wide agreement and little action. That is the opening you can use, because you can move on this faster than a 5,000-person company can.
Why is this harder without a training function?
Three reasons, and none of them require a complicated diagnosis.
First, no bench. A larger team may be able to cover the work while someone ramps. When every role is staffed once, an unprepared hire does not create extra pressure for a backup. The work waits, gets pushed onto someone else, or comes back wrong.
Second, no training infrastructure. Companies without an L&D function rarely have onboarding built for someone who needs to build experience. Onboarding is usually built to transfer information and assumes they know how to do the job and apply all the information given to them.
Third, the trainer is usually your most expensive person. A founder, department lead, or senior operator becomes responsible for answering questions, reviewing work, correcting mistakes, and explaining judgment that may have taken them years to develop.
In fractional People work, the pattern is consistent. Not ready doesn’t usually mean the wrong hire. It means the onboarding process assumed a person had the experience they were never given a chance to build, and no plan to build it once they arrived.
How do you get an unprepared new hire ready?
You cannot out-hire it, so you build experience on purpose instead of assuming it walks in the door.Hire for potential, but price the development honestly. Someone who can already perform every part of the role at a high level will usually cost more, and the role may leave them little room to grow. You are rarely hiring a finished product. Look for someone who can handle the core work now and grow into the rest.
But potential is not free.
Any cost advantage disappears if you ignore the time required to review work, explain judgment, and build confidence.
Before the person starts, decide:
- what they must be able to own on day one
- what they can learn over the first 90 days
- who will teach it
- how much of that person's time you will protect
- what the next level looks like once they are performing well
Once the hire can do the current role well, they still need somewhere to go. Otherwise, you have spent time building someone up and given them no next step. Deloitte recommends moving toward skills- and potential-based hiring rather than relying on rigid experience requirements. That only works when potential is treated as an investment.
Onboarding should give someone supervised chances to do the job. Instead of a week of documents and demos, give a new hire a small, live piece of work in their first days with a clear owner beside them. Experience comes from doing the job with a safety net.Then review the work while the thinking is still fresh. Ask what they noticed, what they were unsure about, and why they made the choices they did. Understanding how they reached the answer is how you improve the next one.
Pair, don't lecture. The fastest way to transfer experience is to sit a new hire next to the person who already has it, on live work, for longer than feels efficient. It feels slow. It is the shortest path. Let them listen to the call, watch the decision being made, attempt the next version, and compare their reasoning afterward.
Deloitte found the same pattern in its interviews and cites BMW research showing that mixed-experience teams outperformed others.
Measure whether new hires feel equipped. Ramp problems hide until they show up as a resignation or a missed quarter. Use 30, 60, and 90-day onboarding surveys to ask whether the person:
- understands what good performance looks like
- has enough chances to practice the work
- knows when and who to ask for help
- receives feedback soon enough to use it
- has access to someone who can explain difficult decisions
This will be more useful than asking whether onboarding was good. Someone can enjoy the welcome, like the team, and still have no idea how to succeed in the role.
Give your managers a say in building experience. Deloitte found that managers spend just 13 percent of their time on average on tasks such as hiring and onboarding, despite being best placed to pass on tacit knowledge.
Protect that time deliberately. Put review sessions on the calendar before the person starts. Reduce part of the manager's normal workload during the first few weeks. Decide which work the new hire can observe, attempt, and eventually own.Managers cannot develop people with whatever time survives the rest of their calendar.
The ready hire is built, not found
Recent hires are not becoming less capable.
They are being asked to enter the workforce with experience that has become harder to obtain, while companies continue hiring as though someone else already developed them.
Smaller teams feel the cost faster because there is less redundancy, less training infrastructure, and fewer people available to carry the ramp. That does not mean every company should hire inexperienced people. It means the company needs to be honest about what it can support at the current moment, and how to expand its onboarding capabilities.
Hire closer to readiness when immediate independence is essential. Hire for potential when you can provide supervised practice, useful feedback, and protected manager time.
A resume tells you what someone has already been allowed to do, and your onboarding determines what they become capable of doing next.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a new hire "not ready"?
Not ready rarely means the wrong person. It means the distance between the experience a role assumes and the experience the hire was able to build beforehand. Deloitte named this in its 2025 Global Human Capital Trends. As entry-level roles shrink, people arrive without the practical foundation the job was designed around, even when their credentials are strong.
Why are recent hires less prepared than they used to be?
Because the entry-level roles where people used to build experience are disappearing, in large part as AI automates routine work. Deloitte's 2025 research found 66 percent of managers and executives say most recent hires are not fully prepared, with lack of experience the most common reason. The on-ramp to competence has narrowed faster than hiring practices have adjusted.
How is this different without a training function?
It hits harder for three reasons. There is no bench to absorb a hire while they ramp, so the work does not get done rather than getting covered. Onboarding is rarely built to develop experience instead of transferring information. And the person doing the training is usually a founder or senior operator whose time is the most expensive in the company.
How do you onboard someone who lacks experience?
Build experience directly instead of assuming it. Give a new hire a small, live piece of work in their first days with someone experienced beside them, rather than a week of passive documents. Pair them with your strongest operator on live work for longer than feels efficient. Then check in early on whether they feel equipped, before a missed quarter tells you they were not.
What does Deloitte recommend for unprepared new hires?
Deloitte recommends shifting toward skills- and potential-based hiring rather than rigid experience requirements, and doing more to connect employees with chances to build experience. In its 2025 research, 73 percent of executives and 72 percent of workers agreed organizations should provide more of these opportunities, even though fewer than half rated the problem as critically important.
Sources
Deloitte, Closing the experience gap (2025 Global Human Capital Trends), 24 March 2025. Source for the 66 percent, 48 percent, 13 percent, BMW pairing, and the skills- and potential-based hiring recommendation.
Deloitte, 2025 Global Human Capital Trends press release, 24 March 2025. Source for the 73 percent and 72 percent figures.
About the author: Michael Franco is the founder of Quokka Hub, an engagement and culture platform for companies of 5 to 500 employees. He has more than a decade of HR leadership across SaaS, fintech, and services companies.
Last updated: 2026-07-23. Next review: 2026-10-20.