One size does not fit all. As I look across the IT organization, we have many job types: development, quality assurance, network engineering, help desk, analysts and so on. We empower managers to do on-boarding customization. For example, we get thousands of tickets a day and hundreds of questions. A new hire can be overwhelmed, so we establish solutions groups that a new hire can sit with and address certain types of tickets. This is a very different on-boarding process than what we do, for example, in applications development, where we give them a sticky problem to solve and set them free to code on their own.

Phil Schneidermeyer is a partner in the New York City office of Heidrick & Struggles. He specializes in the recruitment of CIOs and their direct reports across all industry sectors.

in CIO's Relationship Building/Networking Drilldown.