New starter IT checklist for recruitment consultants.

Part of our complete guide to IT support for recruitment firms.

A new consultant's first week should be spent on calls, not waiting for someone to reset a password. If IT provisioning is done properly before day one, they can be billing from the moment they sit down.

Before day one

• Laptop built, named, and tested, not just unboxed.
• Email account created and added to the correct distribution lists.
• CRM or ATS login created, with the right permission level for their desk.
• Phone system extension or softphone set up and tested.
• Access to shared drives or folders for their team, not the whole company by default.
• Any licensed tools (LinkedIn Recruiter, job board logins, e-signature software) requested in advance, since these often take longest to arrive.

On day one

• A short walkthrough of how to raise an IT issue, so they're not left guessing in week two.
• Multi factor authentication set up there and then, not left for "later".
• Password manager access, if your firm uses one, so credentials aren't ending up in a notes app.

Within the first week

• Confirm they can access everything their desk actually uses day to day, not just what was on the original request.
• Check they know who to contact for something urgent versus something that can wait.

Why this keeps getting missed

Onboarding checklists tend to live in someone's head rather than on paper, which works fine until that person is on leave or the firm is hiring three consultants at once. A written checklist, reviewed twice a year, removes the dependency on any one person remembering every step.