Onboarding your new hire: the first 90 days

You found the right person, the offer was accepted, and the hard part feels done. From where I sit, this is actually the moment the placement is most fragile. After placing clinicians for clinics across Australia, the pattern I see again and again is that good people are lost not at the offer stage but in the gap between offer and a confident, busy first few months.

The single biggest shift I have watched over the last while is that strong candidates simply won't wait around, and they won't stay anywhere that feels disorganised. Speed matters at every step, and onboarding is part of that. A slow or clunky start tells a new clinician far more about you than your interview did. If their first weeks feel chaotic, sink-or-swim, or like nobody was ready for them, the best ones quietly start taking calls from other clinics, and many of them will have my number.

So I want to give you a practical plan for the first 90 days: what to have sorted before day one, how to ramp an injector instead of throwing them in, and the small things that decide whether someone is still happily with you at six months. This is written for the clinic, from the recruiter who usually hears first when it goes wrong.

Do the boring admin before day one, not on day one

The fastest way to lose momentum with a new clinician is to have them sitting around on their first morning while you sort out things that should have been done weeks earlier. Credentialing, indemnity, and system access all take longer than people expect, so start them the moment the contract is signed, not the week they begin.

Before their first day, work through the obvious list: confirm their AHPRA registration is current and on file, check their professional indemnity cover is in place and that you understand whether it sits with them, with you, or both, and sort the practical access early. That means their login for your booking and clinical notes software, a working email, building or alarm access, ordering scrubs or uniform in the right size, and making sure any product, devices, and consumables they will use are actually in the clinic. None of this is hard. It is just easy to leave until it bites you on the first morning.

Have someone ready to receive them on day one

A new clinician should walk in to find that you were expecting them. Decide in advance who is responsible for them on day one and for the first week, and tell that person it is their job. The owner does not have to be that person, but someone does.

Day one is for the human things more than the clinical ones. Introduce them to the whole team by name, walk them through the clinic so they know where everything lives, show them how the day actually runs at your place, and be clear about the small stuff that no one writes down: breaks, parking, where to put their bag, who to ask when they are stuck. People who feel welcomed and oriented relax, and people who relax learn faster. People who spend their first day feeling like an interruption start their notice period in their head.

Give injectors a mentor and real shadowing, not a cold start

This matters most for cosmetic nurse injectors, who make up the bulk of the people I place, but the principle holds for dermal therapists and any clinical hire. Even an experienced injector is not yet fluent in your protocols, your products, your consult style, or your client base. Throwing them straight onto a full book of their own patients is a fast way to rattle a good clinician and a fast way to create an inconsistent client experience.

Pair them with a named mentor, usually your most experienced injector or a senior clinician, and build in real shadowing. Have them sit in on consultations and treatments first so they can see how your clinic runs an anti-wrinkle or dermal filler appointment from greeting to aftercare. Then have your mentor observe their early treatments before they work fully independently. Agree up front how long this runs and what they need to demonstrate before they are signed off to a full solo list. Clinicians who have been mentored in properly tend to stay, because the place that trained them well is hard to leave.

Ramp the patient load on purpose

One of the most common ways I see a placement wobble is a brand-new clinician handed a packed diary in week one and quietly drowning. The opposite mistake is just as costly: an injector sitting with an empty book for weeks, watching no commission come in, and wondering if they made a bad move. Both push good people back into the market.

Plan a deliberate ramp instead. Start them on a lighter book with longer appointment times so they can do excellent work without rushing, then build the load over the first weeks as they and their mentor are confident. Be honest with yourself and with them about how long it realistically takes to build a steady column at your clinic, and make sure they understand how their pay works, including the base rate and how commission is earned, so the early quieter weeks do not feel like a broken promise. A clinician who can see the path from a light week three to a full week ten will hold their nerve. One who can't won't.

Set expectations clearly and check in often

A lot of early departures are really just unspoken mismatches. The clinic assumed one thing, the clinician assumed another, and nobody said it out loud until it became a problem. You prevent almost all of that with clear expectations and regular, low-drama check-ins.

In the first week, be explicit about what good looks like at your clinic: how you want consults run, your standards for clinical notes and aftercare, how rebooking and product recommendation are handled, and what the day-to-day non-negotiables are. Then put real check-ins in the diary rather than relying on catching them in the corridor. A short, genuine conversation at the end of week one, at thirty days, at sixty, and at ninety gives both sides a structured moment to raise anything small before it grows. Ask how they are finding it, what is working, what is clunky, and what they need from you. People rarely walk out over the thing they told you about. They walk out over the thing they never felt invited to say.

Watch the retention signals through the first six months

The risk does not end at ninety days. When a placement does not last, it often unravels in the first few months, and almost always there were early signals. Because I stay in touch with candidates after they start, I often hear the early warning before the clinic does. The signs are consistent: a clinician who feels their column is not filling the way they were led to expect, who feels unsupported clinically, who senses the goalposts on pay or hours have shifted, or who simply feels like a number rather than a valued part of the team.

The clinics that keep people are not the ones with the flashiest perks. They are the ones who do what they said they would, who flex when something reasonable comes up, and who make a good clinician feel seen and backed. Today's strong candidates are deeply conscious of who they work for and what that says about them, so the experience you give them is part of your reputation in a small industry where people talk. Onboard like the placement matters, keep your early promises, and most of the people I send you will still be happily with you long after the first ninety days.

If a placement is at risk, talk to us early

If you sense a new hire is wobbling, or if a role has not landed the way you hoped, the worst thing you can do is wait. We would always rather have an honest conversation early, while there is still room to fix things, than be the ones picking up the pieces later. Aesthetics Recruitment Australia has placed clinicians for clinics right across the country, and a good part of what we do is helping clinics get the start right so the people we place actually stay.

Common questions