jonathan@researchcomputingteams.org
This resource first appeared in issue #121 on 07 May 2022 and has tags Hiring: Other, Hiring: Onboarding
The Ultimate Guide to Onboarding Software Engineers - Csaba Okrona
Eventually I’ll try to do a similar onboarding process starting-point checklist for full time staff. Okrona’s article touches on what some of the biggest differences will be (and it isn’t particularly limited to software developers)
When you’re hiring someone you hope will be on your team and successful for a long time (at least a couple of years) doing work you don’t even know will happen yet, then there are other things you need to add to the onboarding. Okrona has on the list onboarding into the wider organization - getting them familiar with and maybe introduced to stakeholders, other departments, communities of practice of relevant, etc. Also there is onboarding into the team and organizational cultures - what matters most to those groups.
What I really like about this article though is the part about expectation management - for you, for stakeholders, and of course for the new team member. Okrona strongly suggests having 30, 60, 90, and 150 day milestones, what you expect them to have accomplished or to be able to do at those points. Not only does that give them something to aim towards, and milestones by which they can gauge their progress, it’s also something to use to set expectations for stakeholders or team members (“Frank just got here 3 weeks ago! We don’t expect new team members to be doing code reviews until month three, remember? He’ll get there, don’t worry”).
I’ll add that those milestones are great to share with potential new hires even when they’re just candidates - you can put them in the candidate packet or even job description. A more ambitious version is to have defining those milestones be the first part of the hiring process, before even writing the job ad, and to back out all the candidate requirements from those milestones. Having that kind of clarity adds a coherence to the hiring process, makes it very clear to job seekers if this is a job that they’re interested in, and provides them with some kind of evidence that there’s a plan for their success if they do join the team.
