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Ask HN: Onboarding of new graduates in a remote workplace

4 points by IvyMike ↗ HN
I'm curious how companies are handling onboarding of new graduates when their workplace has gone remote. I haven't had to do any onboarding since COVID, and have never done onboarding of any talent into a remote workplace, but it seems fraught with pitfalls. I'd love to hear people's best practices and avoid any mistakes.

9 comments

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mdekkers
The same way you onboard folks that are not remote, sans the awkward shuffle around the place shaking hands with strangers and being told where the toilets and fire exits are.

I’d love to hear what kind of pitfalls concern you.

paulcole
This is kind of like one of the key mistakes people make w/ remote work. You don't just do the same things you do in the office, you do them with the benefits (and drawbacks) of remote work in mind.

In an office it's easy for a new hire to ask a question or get someone's attention. When remote, how does the company communicate culturally? Is there an expectation for response times? If not, what internal tools and resources are there that allow a new hire to self-solve common issues?

Also, figure out parts of onboarding are best done synchronously vs. ascynchronously.

mdekkers
> In an office it's easy for a new hire to ask a question or get someone's attention. When remote, how does the company communicate culturally? Is there an expectation for response times? If not, what internal tools and resources are there that allow a new hire to self-solve common issues?

How is this any different in office vs remote? All of this should be written down in the company manual, at least for a well-functioning org. What is the mistake here? Onboarding folks is literally communicating “this is how we do things around here”

paulcole
All of that is different in an office vs. remote.

> All of this should be written down in the company manual, at least for a well-functioning org

Why not videos that a person can watch and follow along with? Why not 1:1 virtual meetings for some things in a remote company and 1:1 in-person meetings for (perhaps the same or different) things in a non-remote company? Why not quizzes that can be completed when the person wants to complete them rather than a meeting?

> Onboarding folks is literally communicating “this is how we do things around here”

Kind of. And the different definitions of "around here" can (should IMO) lead to different methods and approaches to communicating it.

I also think that onboarding is what things we do and why we do them, not just how things are done.

I think handing someone a manual can be an OK onboarding experience for some companies and some people but can generally be improved upon.

octo-andrero
> In an office it's easy for a new hire to ask a question or get someone's attention. When remote, how does the company communicate culturally? Is there an expectation for response times? If not, what internal tools and resources are there that allow a new hire to self-solve common issues?

I'm a solution architect and I've been working last 3 year remotely for my current employer and I never meet anybody from my team in person. You may joke, that they are AI-generated avatars :)

We have a team chat in slack where all questions / important updates are posted and this works fine. If one faces some issues with local environment setup or access, usually somebody reacts in 15 minutes or so. You may argue that your new colleague do nothing this 15 minutes, but from the other side (a) he have to continue trying / google and as a result he learns (b) experienced engineers are not disturbed in the middle of current task. Also, we have a daily 1hr-long zoom call to discuss on-going questions.

I never faced cases when I contact somebody through direct messages during his normal working hours and I have to wait for response till tomorrow. Usually my colleagues respond to me in 5, maybe 10 minutes. Also, usually I can schedule a zoom call for the same day if I need this.

Regarding an expectations for response time and the company communication culture, the idea is to try do all your best to help other and do not slow down others intentionally, because "we work remotely". Not sure that it's possible to set some SLAs to distinguish responsible remote employees from those who abuse remote work opportunity, but you definitely will "feel" this difference if you communicate with remote colleagues intensively.

>Also, figure out parts of onboarding are best done synchronously or asynchronously

Do all the onboarding synchronously and talk to a new hire as much as it's required. This shows a good attitude. Still, the synchronous onboarding can be remote.

smartis2812
I'm also curious how the get the most of such a onboarding
catherinecodes
If your workplace doesn't have a lot of meetings or informal gettogethers, set up meetings with each group or team in your organization where the new joiner is the guest of honor. Space them at least a day apart so the newcomer isn't overwhelmed. Each group describes what they're working on and why it's important to the organization.
paulcole
We do this where I work and have gotten better results by having each team lead record a Loom video where they talk about their department’s work and purpose with accompanying slides. The new team member watches them and then there’s a meeting calendared with the team lead (sometimes entire department) to do Q&A about the video.

Gives the person more time to digest and think of questions.

We have like 5 departments and aim to get all 5 meetings done by the end of the second week, roughly.