Over the past months, the engineering team has worked a lot to provide a very qualitative onboarding process to anyone who joins the team. We know that the first months as a new team member are crucial, especially because calldesk is building a complex product that requires time and effort in order to be proficient. Since we've been using AWS services extensively (who awarded us for the AWS Startup Architecture of the Year 🎉), there can be an important learning curve before being fully operational using the services. We also have plenty of micro-services talking to each other, so it takes time before being able to design, develop and document new features on our products.
But the onboarding process is not only about technical knowledge and skills, but also about getting to know your new colleagues and the dynamic between the teams. Finally, we've completely redesigned the onboarding process to fit the remote needs due to the pandemic.
Our goal is to share what we've put in place and what we think are good practices to ensure an exceptional onboarding process for our new Software Engineers.
We believe that the first interactions between the candidates and the team are already part of the onboarding process. You should consider any candidate as your future fellow teammate and provide him the best possible experience.
During the interview process, we strive to introduce different members of the team (Product & Engineering) in a different manner. The product team will make a product demonstration where the candidate can ask any question he has in mind. It is also the opportunity for one of our Product Managers to introduce what they do at calldesk and what will be the next focus. The candidate will also meet 2 Software Engineers that are part of the team he will join if he is hired. These Software Engineers are responsible for doing a design interview, but also take some time to discuss with the candidate. The candidate also meets the Engineering Manager and the CEO, so that he can ask questions about the company vision, business strategy, and so on. One of those people will be the mentor of the candidate.
A Software Engineer candidate meets around half the Engineering team during its interview process. We were used to organizing a team meeting as well, where the candidate could meet the whole company in our offices, but we didn't manage to find a way to replace that remotely in an efficient manner.
Finally, our objective during this interview process is to give a very good overview of the candidate's future daily basis. He has to be able to imagine a typical week as Software Engineer at calldesk: what he will do, how he will interact with the other teams, what kind of features he will work on, how the Product and Engineering teams are organized, what is the company business model and strategy, what is our culture and values, our code guidelines and best practices, the technologies we use...
Our onboarding process is designed to follow the newcomer during his first 3 months in the team. During the first week, he will be given a spreadsheet with the list of everything he needs to know after 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. There is common technical knowledge but also the knowledge that depends on the team the newcomer joins. Technical knowledge may be various:
Here what it looks like:
We have built learning paths with videos, articles, peer programming sessions, peer reviews, quizzes... so that the newcomer has a clear view of how to get the whole required knowledge to become proficient on a daily basis. Those learning paths have to be followed during the first 3 months by the newcomer, and his mentor will help him find the right resource if he doesn't know the answer to a question.