New Consultant Onboarding

HR routes the offer letter, employee NDA, and IP assignment for countersignature before Day 1. NDAs survive termination (typically 5+ years) and the IP assignment is what transfers consulting work product to the firm — neither can be deferred to the first week.

The new hire declares prior employers, board seats, family relationships, and personal investments that could conflict with current or pipeline engagements. Engagement Operations runs this against the client list before staffing — late COI checks are a top reason engagements unwind painfully.

For each declared conflict, document whether it is screenable (Chinese wall around specific engagements), waivable (with client consent), or disqualifying. The engagement partner signs off in writing; keep the memo with the personnel file for future independence audits.

Tier the check against the client portfolio the consultant will be staffed to. Financial-services clients commonly require credit checks; healthcare clients require BAA-eligible screening; federal-government work requires public-trust positions or active clearance reactivation through Sterling, Checkr, or HireRight.

Image the laptop with full-disk encryption (FileVault or BitLocker), enroll it in Jamf or Intune, create the Okta account with MFA required, and assign SaaS licenses for Harvest, Asana or Monday, Slack, and the firm's document repo. Day-1 client access without Day-1 device controls is a common audit finding.

Workstream playbook, deliverable template library, billing manual, and code of conduct. Pre-reading these on payroll-eligible time keeps Day 1 free for the high-bandwidth conversations that don't translate to PDFs.

IT confirms the laptop reports compliant in Jamf or Intune, MFA is enrolled in Okta, VPN connects, and the password manager is signed in. Don't take the consultant's word — pull the device's compliance state directly.

Cover the named cases: client data lives on the firm-issued laptop or the client-provided VDI, never on personal email or personal cloud. File transfer happens through the firm's encrypted channel, not as Gmail attachments. A signed NDA does not protect the firm if a consultant emails a client deck to a personal address — the device controls and the protocol are the actual control.

I-9 Section 2 must be completed within three business days of the start date — physical inspection of original documents (or E-Verify remote-examination workflow if the firm is enrolled). Don't let this slide to week two.

Walk the workstream playbook, the firm's standard slide and report templates, and the internal QA gate (the color review or challenge session) that every client-facing deliverable passes through before send. Junior-staffed deliverables that ship without a senior pass are how partners get pulled in only after a client complains.

Add the consultant to active project codes they will charge against, including a non-chargeable code for training. Time tracking should start the moment the SOW for any engagement they support is signed — not at kickoff. For T&M engagements, untracked discovery hours are direct revenue loss.

Observer mode — read the prior status reports and RAID log beforehand, sit in on the call, debrief with the engagement manager after. This is also the moment to test that the consultant understands when to escalate vs. when to absorb a client request without committing to scope.

The hire-time COI is a snapshot; the actual engagement assignment may surface conflicts the original screen missed. For accounting-firm-affiliated practices, this is also where AICPA / PCAOB independence rules get applied to spouses' employment, investment portfolios, and prior-engagement involvement.

Mentor reviews the consultant's first substantive contribution before any client-facing send. Document the review feedback in the engagement folder so the pattern of strengths and gaps is available at the 30- and 90-day check-ins, not reconstructed from memory.

Pull the consultant's first month of Harvest entries. Look for missed days, wrong project codes (training hours billed as chargeable is the most common error), and gaps that signal the consultant is not entering time daily. Fix the habit now, not at the quarter-end utilization review.

Engagement partner runs a 30-minute check on ramp progress, blockers, and fit. Discuss utilization to date, the mentor's review feedback, and any client-handling gaps the engagement manager has flagged.

Sit through a complete closeout: knowledge capture, sanitized case-study draft, written reference / case-study consent from the client contact, and project archive (final deliverables + decisions log + key emails). Closeouts done from memory after the team scatters lose firm IP — this is where the consultant learns the discipline.

The 90-day mark is when the consultant joins the annual re-attestation cycle. Capture any changes to investments, family employment, or board seats since the hire-time declaration, and re-screen against the current engagement portfolio.

Engagement partner and practice lead review utilization, deliverable quality (drawing on the documented mentor feedback), and readiness for solo client-facing deliverable ownership. The outcome here gates whether the consultant can sign off on their own client deliverables without partner overlay starting in month four.