团队新人入职指南

1,773 阅读4分钟

因为本人在加拿大, 所以博客内容在github上全是英文的, 现转载到掘金来. 出处: github.com/songzhw/son…

Onboarding Guide

I find there are not many blogs talking about the onboarding guide, but I personally think this is quite important issue to talk about. That's why I write a post about it right now.

1. Why should you care about onboarding guide

If you are a manager and in charge of recruiting people, congratulations. You can make some important decisions for your team. But I have to warn you that candidates accepting your offer is not an end, it is just a begining. I saw a couple of teams made this mistake, so I write this to help you make a better onboarding experience for the new hires.

I personally think the most two important jobs of a team leader are : recruiting the right person, and managing the development process, so you can deliver a good product on time.

After you recruit a right peoson, this is just the begining. If you give the new hire a bad impression, and make them think your company is totally a mess, they can still back off and resign. This is not what we want. We already spent some time to search for good developer and to interview. If we do these process again, it's a waste of the time and costs. In short, We want to recruite the right person, and also to keep them.

That's exactly why we want a good onboarding guide. We want every thing in the new hire's first day is clean and efficient.

2. Onboarding Document

Most managers are very busy every day, and don't have too much time to be with the new hire. That's okay, but then it's quite necessary to have one document for the new hire. Besides, you can not remember every details things, you may forget to mention one thing or two to the new hire. But document will not "forget". You can list all the importatnt things and to-do things in your document.

Take the mobile development team for an example, you should contain at least the following things in your onboard guide document.

  • Introduction.

    • brief introduction to the company
    • introduction to this department
    • introduction to departments in this company that he/she may interact with in the future.
    • introduction to this team (p.s. You should have a link to list all the memeber in this team. It would be even better if every team member has a picture with their names.)
    • introduction to the app we are making right now.
  • The first things the new hire need to do.

    • What's the wifi name and password
    • Do people need a VPN to connect internal network? If it is, provide him/her the user name and the ovpn file.
    • How to setup the email on Mac
    • How to access the jira/stack/hipchat/slack?
    • How to access the code repository?
  • Code base

    • Where is the code repository. (Do we need a VPN to access it?)
    • What is the Git policy?
      • Which one is the main branch(develop? master?)
      • Do we have a release branch;
      • Which branch should we branch off if we want to fix a bug?
      • Which branch should we branch off if we want to start a new feature?
  • Serveral other important things

    • the time to work and to leave. Or is the work hour flexible?
    • lunch break. When is the lunch break? How long is the lunch break?
    • Do we need to punch in and punch out every day?
    • If the new hire has some personal issues, and wants to take a day off, how should he/she inform you?
    • When is stand-up meeting every day?
    • How long is one sprint? How many sprints do we need to release a new version?

3. What you need to do else?

Before a new hire started his/her first day, you need to confirm with the HR to see if his/her email, account, computer is already ready.
Also make sure the new hire has a seat to put his/her personal things.

On the new hire's first day, you will often be asked to pick him up. Please be on time. Being on time means you respect them and would love to work with him. I know exact such an opposite example. My friend was supposed to be picked up by his boss at 9:00 a.m on his first day. But his boss did not show up until 11:00 a.m. This is quite rude, and it finally turns out this company is disordered, and my friend eventually left the company after one month.

Lead the new hire to get his/her new computer, and give him/her the account id and the original password. Then show him/her the onboarding guide document above.

Show him/her around. Where is the cafeteria; where is the meeting room; where is the wash room. If you company has some special features, you can highlight them, such as nap room, gym, room with fireplace, room with great view. In short, you try to impress the new hire and make sure he/she like this new place. This is a new place, a new job, it's natural that the new hire may feel anxious, so please do you best to make him/her feel comfortable.

Introduce the team member. If your team is quite large, then it's no need to introduce everyone. After all, there is absolutly no way that the new hire can remember everyone's name. Just introduce the people he/she may contact with, such as some business men, UED/DCX designers, backend developers, QAs who he/she will contact with later.

After all these thing above being done, you now can lead him to a private meeting room, and have a conversation with him. This is very important, a document can not do this job for you. Because you need to mention some personal goals with the new hire. And it also shows you respect the new hire, and want to have a conversation with him/her any time.

In this conversation, you could contain these topics:

  • The direction of this team. What are your team making right now? And what's the direction in the long term?
  • What could he/she do in the next few days?
  • What should he/she do in the next months?
  • What is good in the team/company? (pay raise, promotion, nice people, good gym, good food, ...) -- Just tell him/her what's good here, and try to make him/her feel happy to stay in this team.
  • Ask him/her if he/she has any questions?

4. Mentor

If you are really busy to show a new hire around, then you could introcue a "Mentor" policy. You assign a mentor for each new hire. Once the new hire has any questions, he/she can ask his/her mentor, so the rest developer could focus on their work, and there are someone to answer the new hire's question. Win-win.

P.S. Mentor can answer questions. But you still have to have the conversation we mentioned in the part 3 with the new hire.

5. Conclusion

If you think this is too much for a team leader, then I sincerely ask you to think it again. Like I said, recuiting people and managing the development is the most two important things in a development team. In essential, managing development process is also about motivate people to output some thing on time. So PEOPLE is the most important thing you should pay attention to.

You should make your staff happy, make them think they can grow in your organization, and have a nice work experience here. Then you are able to keep your best man in your team.