Were you unable to catch the “Improving Your Onboarding” webinar on August 4th, organised by CTO Connection and featuring acclaimed engineers from Neu, Cars.com, Grammarly, and Works? If you missed it, you failed to grasp a wonderful chance to obtain valuable insights and get motivated by the recruitment and team-building best practices, which are crucial in today’s remote work world.
Here’s a glimpse of what’s in store for you.
The Reasons Behind My Disastrous Onboarding Experience
During the Cars.com event, CTO Fred Lee gave a keynote speech named “Why I Detest Your Onboarding,” sharing his personal stories of inadequate onboarding. He expressed his annoyance at the lack of attention and effort put into some orientations, such as having a set-up desk without a chair or providing a list of crucial information websites without instructions on how to access them.
Fred’s suggestion is for the hiring manager to oversee the onboarding process by devising checklists that highlight the essential information that the new hire should know. Moreover, virtual lunches with critical individuals should be arranged in the first two weeks of the new hire’s employment to encourage and prioritise interaction. Lastly, Fred emphasised that recruiting, orienting, and training new engineers should be seen as an integrated, interrelated operation. He also pointed out that the importance of the onboarding procedure is frequently disregarded.
Read Also: 10 Tips for a Fruitful Software Developer Onboarding
A Primer on Remote Onboarding
Neu’s CTO Claudius Mbemba recently shared his perspective on the optimal way to ensure successful onboarding of remote engineers. He suggests that a “remote first” approach should be given priority, as this onboarding model presents more significant challenges that necessitate greater discipline. According to Mr. Mbemba, improving remote onboarding (which has five distinct techniques for assessing potential remote engineers before hiring) has benefits that go beyond individual engineers, positively affecting the whole business.
Given the present scenario of remote work, Claudius stresses the significance of a paperless onboarding process, where new employees learn by doing and feel socially supported by their peers. As such, he recommends that the onboarding process does not utilise physical documents or binders, and employees do not feel alone in their new position.
Read Also: 3 Communication Blunders to Avoid for Hybrid Teams
Put a Halt to Tissue Rejection
Three weeks into her tenure as Head of Engineering at Grammarly, Heidi Williams had already gained valuable insights into how to prepare senior newcomers for success. She specifically warned against the issue of “tissue rejection” – a situation in which the current team distrusts a new hire if they had assumed someone from within the company would be promoted instead. Williams also observed that executives often find it challenging to adapt to a new company’s culture, particularly if they had been employed there for a lengthy period.
Heidi developed a roadmap for the initial 30, 60, and 90 days on the job for both new recruits and their managers.
A Team Should be Devoid of “I”
Towards the end of the conference, the Vice President of Partner Engineering at Works presented her all-encompassing strategy for onboarding, dubbed ‘Onboarding that Accelerates Development and Delivery.’ She stressed the significance of effective onboarding, which demands time and resources from the entire team and can result in a momentary decline in output. Yet, she also underscored the impressive long-term advantages of successful onboarding, which can enhance operational performance by 147 percent and surge productivity by a remarkable 70 percent.
The Vice President of Partner Engineering at Works underscored the significance of treating the onboarding process as a joint effort, rather than an individual’s responsibility. She stressed the need to bring new engineers up to speed quickly, as this is crucial for the team to achieve its full potential. Specifically, she outlined the expectations for the first thirty days, the first week, and the subsequent sixty to ninety days on the job.
