Overcoming IT Challenges for Onboarding New Hires

Problem

New hires are the epitome of growing a team. Similarly, we were taking in fresher talents at a faster rate than we had done in our previous period. We were still trying to figure out a successful way of onboarding the fresher talents in the team as the new members brought us a lot of responsibility. We were accountable to know how they were doing in terms of their ramp up, how much support they needed, and if we could start leveraging them on more critical products.

Actions taken

One of the first things I did was identify what the ramp-up expectation should be. Everyone needs to know what they are working towards. Instead of solely focusing on the outcomes from the new hires, I put in as much as I could from my side to give them a clear roadmap. I believe that it was important to give them clearly defined goals at an individual level.

Next, I created a simple framework. I broke it down into different dimensions with their familiarity with the codebase, their productivity, the type of questions they might be asking, and the type of problems they solve. By doing so, at the end of every week, I could take a look at the board. This action helped me assess the completed tasks, followed by a team discussion to help them accelerate.

I feel that as the tech lead, I needed to resort to weekly basis discussions. However, once you have a good number of new hires, it becomes challenging to do this on a regular basis. So, as time went by, I moved on to monthly checkpoints. These checkpoints then gave us a forum where we could share how the progress was made.

Lessons learned

• Create a framework that reduces manual work required to stay on track and become as efficient as possible. It saves a lot of time and energy.
• An organized framework helps new employees to thrive. It also ensures that you, as the manager, have a clear understanding of their progression. It has proved to be a win-win situation for both employers and employees.