Turn a job description into a realistic first-month plan

A job description lists forty duties and says nothing about the order to learn them in. New starters often work it out by trial and error.

If you're the manager, you've got a good idea of the order in your head. Write it down for them, using the job description as the starting point and your own priorities to correct it.

Below are a job description for [ROLE] and my notes on what matters most
in the first month.
Draft a four-week plan. For each week give:
- Learn: two or three things to understand
- Meet: people to talk to and why
- Do: one small piece of real work, with someone to check it with
At the end of the month, one thing they'll have finished that someone
else uses.
Rules:
- Use only what's in the documents. Where something's unknown (a system,
  a person, a process), write [TO FILL IN] instead of inventing it.
- Nothing in week one should depend on access that may not be ready.
- Be realistic: a person new to the organisation can't do the whole
  job in month one.
- Keep it to one page.

Job description: [PASTE]
My priorities: [PASTE]

Go through the plan with the new starter in the first week and ask what they'd change. They'll know things you don't, like what they've already done in a previous job that makes some of it quicker.

The "one thing finished that someone else uses" gives both sides something to point at. A new starter who has delivered something small by week four tends to settle faster, and the team sees what they can do.

The plan complements the first-week guide. Use it as something the manager and the new starter look at together, not a document that gets filed.