5 Reasons Why XXXLdigital’s Onboarding Is Amazing
Onboarding at XXXLdigital
Author: Duver Jaramillo – Frontend Developer
I was reading my Twitter feed the other day and stumbled upon a tweet by a very talented and popular frontend developer (Emma Bostian @EmmaBostian) sharing her new blog post named: “5 Reasons Why Spotify's Onboarding Is Better Than Yours”. She recently started working as a software engineer at Spotify and is sharing bits about the work there. She was obviously quite impressed with the onboarding process at Spotify and decided to share her views on it. This peaked my interest as I had just completed my onboarding process at XXXLdigital.
In this post I would like to address each of the five items she mentions in her blog and compare them with our process at XXXLdigital.
1. “They Don’t Expect Instantaneous Productivity”
I’ve been at XXXLdigital for almost three months now, and I’ve worked as a FE developer for more than ten years and for several companies during that time, but the anxiety regarding instant productivity that comes with starting at a new company is always there at first. However, at XXXLdigital, you do not feel that kind of pressure. They are aware that you need some time to catch up with the rest of the team and that they also need to help you reach the level of performance expected so there is no rush or pressure to be at a certain level at a specific point in time. XXXLdigital will also provide you with all the tools and support you may need to get there and they let you know all of this.
2. “They Assign You A Buddy”
Although it was not my first time having a buddy for my onboarding process at a company (with a few experiences being somewhat disappointing), when you start your onboarding process at XXXLdigital, you are assigned a mentor (buddy), who is there to help you define a few goals for your trial period (measurable objectives during a period of three months to determine how you are doing). Moreover, the mentor always supports you by making sure you have everything you need to achieve those goals and he/she is also there to show you around and to explain how things work – both technically and organisationally.
There also is another role: the supporters. These are other colleagues who volunteer to assist you with specific tasks. I’ll have to say that this is brilliant, because you not only gain technical knowledge about project-specific topics but you also get to know other team members better by doing pair programming, or receiving help during video meetings. The supporters are different for each task so at the end of the onboarding process you will have met a lot of team members and they will have met you as well.
3. “They Provide In-Depth Developer Tutorials”
At XXXLdigital, we have a fair amount of documentation on tooling, tech stack and processes and we try to keep those documents updated and accurate. Moreover, we encourage new team members to contribute to them with their experience and findings during the onboarding. This is to make the process easier for the people joining after them. There also are numerous online workshops and thematic trainings on how to handle aspects of the project that are harder to show or demonstrate with documentation.
4. “They Schedule Time For Team Introductions”
At XXXLdigital, there always is room for social interactions and feeling part of the team is a top priority here. Their introductory meetings, company history presentations, social coffee spaces and dev talks have made me feel like part of the team from day one. This is truly amazing as it may be key for the new colleague’s success and to become a permanent member of the team.
Virtual Welcome Day @XXXLdigital
5. “They Organize Onboarding Tasks On Trello”
Another fantastic aspect of onboarding at XXXLdigital is that an actual development project is set up for it in JIRA and it is constantly improving thanks to the feedback of the onboarding colleagues. If you are lucky and have joined the company along with other people (like I did), you’ll be part of a team (the onboarding team), using Scrum as methodology and working on carefully selected tasks. These tasks are prioritised accordingly from easy to difficulty across several sprints. The process is well-organised so at the end of the project (including about four sprints in eight weeks), you will have gained the technical knowledge to start working on an actual project as part of a team. You will be confident enough to start pushing code thanks to all the training tasks you performed during the onboarding project.
The approach also includes working with Scrum on a daily basis for you to become familiar with the process (we even had our own Scrum Master), you will learn how the company uses JIRA, how ceremonies work, etc. Junior devs receive Scrum training and people who are experienced in using it get to refresh their skills as was the case for me. As a Certified Scrum Developer, working with the methodology on the onboarding project felt familiar and I felt like it was simply very well done.
“Onboarding is stressful, for both employees and employers, but having an organized onboarding process can ease nerves on both sides. ”
I totally agree with Emma’s statement and share the opinion that a well-done onboarding project is a crucial part of a new employee’s success at the company and that it will increase talent retention. So it is worth investing in and it is important to recognise the amazing work of everyone involved.
I know this is a fairly new project in our company and we are starting to implement it in other locations too. Please share your feedback with the team and help develop the process to improve it even more.
Duver started at XXXLdigital in April 2020 - which means his onboarding process mainly took place online. Even this challenge was and will be tackled successfully by our team in future.
— Let’s excite employees! —
*German version to be found here