The gap between accepting an offer and arriving on day one is where early talent attrition begins.

Early talent hires are particularly vulnerable to the gap between offer acceptance and start date. For a school leaver or recent graduate, weeks of silence after an offer can feel like abandonment. Competing offers arrive. Expectations drift from what the role actually involves. Confidence wavers. By the time the person arrives on day one, the motivation that made them the right hire is already diminished.

The problem continues into the early weeks. Onboarding that consists of induction slides and compliance training does not give a new early talent hire what they actually need: a genuine understanding of the organisation, their role within it, and the skills to contribute from the start. Mismatched expectations cause suitable candidates to drop out more often late in the process. That same mismatch, left unaddressed, drives early attrition after hire.

The investment made in finding and selecting the right person should not be lost in the weeks between offer and impact.

We use the same Immersive Work Experience platform that delivers immersive work experience to create structured pre-boarding and onboarding programmes. For new hires in the period between offer and start, this means employer-branded content that keeps them connected to the organisation: insight into their team, their role, the culture, and what the first weeks will involve. Trackable, self-paced and accessible on any device.

For the early weeks in role, the same platform supports structured learning pathways, skills development activities and onboarding milestones. New hires arrive informed rather than anxious. Managers spend less time on induction logistics and more time on the relationships that drive early performance.

The engagement data generated through pre-boarding and onboarding feeds back into the same evidence record built during recruitment. The organisation can see who engaged deeply, who developed quickly, and where support is needed, from first employer encounter through to early months in role.

Mismatched expectations between candidate and role cause suitable hires to leave 14% more often in the early months. Immersive Work Experience-based pre-boarding directly addresses this by ensuring new hires arrive with accurate, employer-specific knowledge of the role and the organisation. The same platform that has delivered immersive work experience to over 38,000 participants at DHL in a single year is the platform behind our pre-boarding and onboarding programmes. ISO 27001, ISO 9001 and Cyber Essentials Plus certified.