There are 7 key goals of the EOI:
- New Hire feels warmly welcomed
- New Hire knows who his or her Manager, Tech Lead, Product Manager, Team, and Department Heads are
- New Hire understands the product or service he or she will be working on and the value it generates for ZEFR
- New Hire knows where the codebase & associated docs are
- New Hire understands his or her day to day responsibilities, medium & long term goals
- New Hire is spun up, and opens a PR on their first week
- New Hire is ready to come in the next day and hit the ground running
Before the New Hire arrives, schedules should be appropriately managed so that anyone involved in aiding the New Hire on their first week has time set aside to do so. Nothing's worse than being hired and having no one around to help / welcome you because they're in meetings. A Peer should be chosen to be the New Hire's pair for the first sprint or two
On the New Hire's first day, he or she will go through general onboarding (history / receive laptop / accounts set up). This process generally takes about the first half of a New Hire's day
After the New Hire has arrived & received his or her welcome kit and computer, the New Hire's Manager will introduce them to their team. Take the New Hire out to lunch. Manager, Tech Lead, Product Manager, Team, anyone who can should attend, camaraderie is important. Bon Appetit!
After Lunch, the Manager take them out for coffee. During this walk and talk Manager should establish a clear line of communication ( I'm here for you, This is where we are, This is where we're going, This is how you can help )
New Hire meets with Tech Lead & Product Manager for a deep dive into the product that he or she will be working on and how it contributes to ZEFR as a whole.
New Hire pairs with Peer from team. This Peer has been selected ahead of time to be the New Hire's pair and has a ticket cut for spending the second half of the day with them. With the aid of their Peer, the New Hire will pull the repo down, install the necessary dependencies, and spin up the application they will be working on.
Peer from Step 5 will have pre selected a simple & quick ticket ( Adding their email to the contributors list in the package.json for example ) ahead of New Hire's arrival. Peer and New Hire pair on ticket with New Hire driving. Once the ticket is complete the Peer will help the New Hire open up a PR and will explain our Code Review / Git Flow / Deployment Flow. For the rest of the week the Peer should expect to pair often with the New Hire and help them wherever possible.
After the first week, Manager, Product Manager, and Peer should continually reach out and ensure that the New Hire is having a pleasant first day / week / month / quarter. Additionally, Manager should set up monthly / quarterly goals for the New Hire and should do their best to ensure that the New Hire has all the tools necessary for success towards these goals.
This is great. The only comment is to get HR's current orientation process and determine how that impacts this. On my first day, Orientation (paperwork, badge, facilities tour, receiving my machine and getting the various accounts/passwords, etc. set up) took up at least half the day (through lunch). But I'm not sure it took the full day (I really can't recall what I did on the first day that wasn't orientation related but I think I had a couple of awkward "find things to read" hours at the end of the day).
Anyhow, I'm sure they've changed things, but if orientation takes around half the day, this should maybe put #2 and #3 on day 1, and the rest on day 2 (actually spinning up and first ticket could easily consume a whole day). We should also have QA/code reviewers aware that the ticket is coming so they can reserve time for test/demo so the PR can go through the full cycle in one day.
Also, maybe make "the New Hire's Manager will introduce them to their team" an explicit step (ideally with time reserved on the calendar for the team so everyone knows to be there).