Onboarding Magic

Preparing and Optimizing the First Days for Your Remote Developer

Onboarding is the first, most crucial step in the journey with your remote developer. With the right approach and carefully thought-out plan, your developer will be up and running, adding value, in mere days. Additionally, create an environment that fuels productivity, fosters engagement, and nurtures a strong, collaborative relationship.

Photo by Jamie Morrison on Unsplash

This is the fifth article in a series about finding and hiring a remote developer. From the last posts, you’ve learned a lot about finding, hiring and contracting.

Hiring the right candidate

Hiring the right candidate (2)

Hiring for skills

Navigating Legal Labyrinths

Bringing on a remote developer comes with unique challenges, the different time zones, access, setting up development tools and a local build environments, establishing clear communication channels, and instilling a sense of belonging, despite the geographical distance.

With the right preparation: technology and human touch, you can onboard a developer in a way that not only combats these challenges but also leverages the benefits of remote work, setting up your developer for peak performance early on.

At Tairi, onboarding is a joint process between us and our clients. We have a very clear plan for the first weeks to get them up and running, with a combination of Notion and Slack for getting to know our company, our procedures, but also to get to know the rest of the team. Most important, I make sure there’s always room for questions and ensure we engage frequently in the beginning.

Our Framework

We setup our onboarding in three different phases: preparation, their first week and continued engagement. Let’s start with the preparation. Before someone starts, you want to be fully prepared. The most important things to check / plan for ahead of time:

• Signed Contracts
  please, don’t let someone start if the contract isn’t signed. Last time, we looked at important subjects such as confidentiality and intellectual property. You need these to be covered before someone starts, and before you give them access to your internal systems and documentation.

• Access to Tools
  You want your developer to be up and running as soon as possible. In the ideal situation, they’d have a local build environment up and running at the end of their first day. Make sure you have their access setup: Jira or Trello, GIT, as well as any other tools you use. Add them to Slack as a first step on their first day.

• Introduction Message
  Prepare an introduction message, either an email or on Slack - to introduce the developer to the rest of the team.

• First-day Meetings
  Schedule all meetings for the first day, at least a first welcome and onboarding meeting at the start of the day. Invite your new developer to your Daily Standup. Also, schedule any other introduction meetings that may be required for that first day.

Then, it’s day one.

• Pre-boarding
  At the start of the day, add your new developer to Slack. Also, share links to your remote work handbook, company policies & guidelines and any other company documentation. Send a personal welcome email or a message with the most important documents (both technical, as well as company / cultural) to read during the first week. Finally, send the team introduction email or message you prepared.

• First meeting
  Start with an onboarding session, introducing them to the company culture, vision, mission and values - as well as introducing them to the key tools, systems and processes they’ll need. Provide them with access to the key systems, and repeat the list of important documents they need to review.

• Interactions
  Schedule some first interactions with the rest of the team. Even if you’re an async comms organization, get some async interactions, welcomes and intros going on Slack. Schedule introduction meetings with their immediate colleagues.

• First Week
  For their first week, set clear expectations as to what you expect from them. They should get their build environment setup, have a dev environment fully up and running and start to work on a first issue. Make sure you get to see first code as soon as possible.
  For the rest of the first week, ensure you have at least daily catch-up meetings with your new developer. Encourage them to try and solve issues themselves first, but then ask them to you as quickly as possible.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

After the first week, your developer should be mostly up and running on their own. They’ll be part of regular processes, know where to go for questions and know their closest team members. Here’s what you’ll need to continue:

• Expectations and Goals
  Start assigning tasks gradually increasing complexity, based on their comfort level and understanding of the work. Set up goals and metrics to measure their progress.

• Regular Check-ins
  Schedule regular check-ins to discuss their progress, clarify doubts, and provide feedback.

• Engagement Activities
  In a remote environment, it’s not all about work. Plan virtual team-building activities or workshops to promote interaction and foster a sense of belonging. Include your remote developers, even if they are contractors.

• Feedback
  After a few weeks, it’s time for first feedback. Make sure you give your developer feedback on what’s being going well, what you like, but also what they may want to look at improving. On the other hand, also seek feedback yourself - on the onboarding process, but also on yourself, the organization, the team and tools and processes. An experienced developer that has just come in can provide a refreshing view of what’s going well and what could use improvement.

Upwork and Fiverr may give the impression you can just ship some work to your developer and expect excellent results. But, there is a lot more to making the most of your new remote hire. It’s not just about code and toolchains, or just about work. Onboarding is also about integrating them into the team, familiarizing them with the company culture and establishing strong, open communication channels. Engagement and informal interaction are key to a successful onboarding process.

Are you looking to hire remote developers, but still unsure if remote is for you? Reach out to us at Tairi, and let's see if one of our Philippine developers could be right for you.

Now that we’ve covered hiring and onboarding, in my next story, I’m going into training, learning & development. If you haven’t already, subscribe below to receive it!