Congratulations! Your tech company has found the perfect fit for your team — a talented software engineer ready to take your project to new heights. But, wait… A typical developer’s lifecycle suggests 3 critical periods when your new hires may quit: after 3, 5, or 8 months. Do you want to help them be productive and stay on the project as long as you need? Then, the next critical step after hiring is to ensure seamless integration, aka onboarding best practices, to set the newcomers up for success.
How Does Onboarding Impact the Developer’s Performance?
The first day defines a developer's entire journey with the company. A well-structured and positive onboarding process for developers and engineers is:
A motivation to contribute to the company, as developers feel care;
Less time to get up to speed with the project and technologies being used, as developers don’t have to return to the organizational issues;
Reduced errors and rework, as newcomers understand the company's coding standards and development processes;
Adaptation to the company culture, as tech specialists get information about the company's values, work ethics, and norms.
Want the effort you put into hunting for tech talent to pay off? Then, we are here to guide you on the structuring the initial adaptation and captivating your tech hires.
Is Your Successful Onboarding Program Ready: Checklist
While some companies coach newcomers in the over-the-shoulder manner, we recommend conducting a formal onboarding. You need an agenda which documents each onboarding stage.
It reminds us of starting a new software project, when developers begin with a structured framework or skeleton code that provides a foundation. Poor foundation leads to more bugs and kludges.
A Template of a New Employee Onboarding Program
Assign a friendly mentor or buddy to guide the new developer throughout the onboarding journey.
Approve the onboarding date, time and communication platform, like Google Meet or Zoom, with your new hire.
Share access to the relevant resources and documentation.
Create a working email and a profile in the corporate messenger.
Depending on the team role, register accounts for a development environment, cloud services, task trackers, version control systems, databases, QA assurance tools, technical documentation platforms, and third-party APIs you use.
Agree on the following Corporate Communication Policies that may include the standard ways to resolve controversies, rules of ethical code review instructions about organizing discussions in proper threads to keep the focuses clear.
Gather all the requirements about the approved daily routines in one place. Deadline management in IT is associated with agile lunch breaks, divided into small parts, to react to incoming requests faster. Also, you can explain to your newcomers what approach to estimates is expected of them in your organization.
Provide the SOPs on development stages, coding standards, domain, and project references. As that might be a huge piece of reading, highlight what parts of it are the most crucial. Developers could explore the rest later. The main thing is to prepare and give them an ultimate cheat sheet.
Inform the newcomers about all the security measures on the project, like using IDEs or corporate password-managing software to prevent data leaks.
Ensure they know how to recognize suspicious activity such as phishing emails or ransomware attacks, and how to escalate those to security when noticing one.
One by one, send agreement, NDA, and other relevant documents for your new hire to sign.
Provide additional explanations about the responsibilities, limitations, and various exceptional situations.
Discuss the contract completion terms.
Any new person would wonder who they may ask for help when questions arise with tasks, accesses, or payroll. This is high time to inform newcomers, who covers what in the company. A good practice is to have a handbook or an orientation kit with quick access to main contacts and useful links.
Agree with your hires what tasks you are planning to assign to them within the next 2 weeks, and how that trajectory will change in 1 month. Thus, you make people aware of their short-term and long-term goals.
Make pulse checks, encouraging your tech specialists to share their impressions.
You’ve done a great job together. Sincere thanks and encouragement dispel the possible remaining doubts about the chosen position. And don’t forget to invite your new hires to their first meeting with the team.
Block
PREP
Actions
Assign a friendly mentor or buddy to guide the new developer throughout the onboarding journey.
Approve the onboarding date, time and communication platform, like Google Meet or Zoom, with your new hire.
INTRO
Actions
Share access to the relevant resources and documentation.
Create a working email and a profile in the corporate messenger.
Depending on the team role, register accounts for a development environment, cloud services, task trackers, version control systems, databases, QA assurance tools, technical documentation platforms, and third-party APIs you use.
SOFT SKILLS TRAINING
Actions
Agree on the following Corporate Communication Policies that may include the standard ways to resolve controversies, rules of ethical code review instructions about organizing discussions in proper threads to keep the focuses clear.
Gather all the requirements about the approved daily routines in one place. Deadline management in IT is associated with agile lunch breaks, divided into small parts, to react to incoming requests faster. Also, you can explain to your newcomers what approach to estimates is expected of them in your organization.
HARD SKILLS TRAINING
Actions
Provide the SOPs on development stages, coding standards, domain, and project references. As that might be a huge piece of reading, highlight what parts of it are the most crucial. Developers could explore the rest later. The main thing is to prepare and give them an ultimate cheat sheet.
SECURITY TRAINING
Actions
Inform the newcomers about all the security measures on the project, like using IDEs or corporate password-managing software to prevent data leaks.
Ensure they know how to recognize suspicious activity such as phishing emails or ransomware attacks, and how to escalate those to security when noticing one.
PAPER SIGNING
Actions
One by one, send agreement, NDA, and other relevant documents for your new hire to sign.
Provide additional explanations about the responsibilities, limitations, and various exceptional situations.
Discuss the contract completion terms.
CONTACTS SHARING
Actions
Any new person would wonder who they may ask for help when questions arise with tasks, accesses, or payroll. This is high time to inform newcomers, who covers what in the company. A good practice is to have a handbook or an orientation kit with quick access to main contacts and useful links.
ROADMAP DISCUSSION
Actions
Agree with your hires what tasks you are planning to assign to them within the next 2 weeks, and how that trajectory will change in 1 month. Thus, you make people aware of their short-term and long-term goals.
FEEDBACK EXCHANGE
Actions
Make pulse checks, encouraging your tech specialists to share their impression
FINAL CEREMONIES
Actions
You’ve done a great job together. Sincere thanks and encouragement dispel the possible remaining doubts about the chosen position. And don’t forget to invite your new hires to their first meeting with the team.
As you can see, the successful onboarding process is a multifaceted immersion into the new role. A confident start turns on a green light for new developers to participate meaningfully in team activities without extra clarifications or unfinished administrative procedures. That’s why we provide gradual, planned, and tailored onboarding services to companies which outstaff their tech teams with us.
5 Onboarding Success Factors We Stand for
Besides creating a welcoming program, we recommend you make 5 more steps to shaping a successful onboarding process. Why? To provide stress-free immersion for your new hires.
#1. Linear Roadmap
Try not only to create a roadmap in advance but also follow it. Lead newcomers from one onboarding stage to another, and let them eat a whale in chunks.
Linear onboarding presupposes knowledge blocks (project concepts, the best development practices, and team-specific guidelines) like clear building blocks in coding (functions, classes, and modules). These blocks are easy-to-use in the future.
The most practical way to keep the attention of your hires focused is to create onboarding flow in the HRIS (human resources information system). Thus, you and your new team member have a visual progress bar. Many systems also offer gamification features, which make a newcomer feel accomplished when completing each step.
#2. Security and Transparency
Nobody wants to find their credit card or tax ID number in third-party databases. So the responsible companies always let their hires know:
How they process team members’ personal data (Outstaff Your Team does that in accordance with strict privacy standards, GDPR and CCPA);
Where to find the already signed documents (in an HRIS, for instance).
When onboarding developers and engineers, come up with a more detailed guide on company expectations about their roles. For example:
Provide key performance indicators (KPIs);
Be open about current challenges.
As with many other business processes, a successful employee onboarding process is a secure and honest one.
#3. Personalization
A cookie-cutter onboarding system can lead to misunderstandings. Give each of the novices enough time to learn all the instructions you provide.
Consider which parts of the onboarding program are more crucial for a certain role and unusual for a newcomer. For instance, we have the employment background check done before making a job offer. During this check, we get insights into the depth of a newcomer’s expertise in certain technologies and areas provided by their previous company. It allows our onboarding team to outline what responsibilities need devoting more attention to.
At the end of each onboarding stage, conduct a short quiz or a personalized Q&A session to reveal knowledge gaps and eliminate them.
#4. Brevity
Put your messages into shorter sentences, and discuss mainly the purposes and results of the onboarding procedures. But if the developer wants to dig deeper, check Principle #3 and give more explanations about their future strategical tasks and other things they answer about. Building productive relationships is easier when people’s enthusiasm is at its best.
Ideal onboarding covers all the essentials. You can develop separate training programs: 1 day for the administrative and welcoming part and from 3 days or 3 months for the Hard Skills Training stage, depending on the project’s complexity.
#5. Relaxed Vibes
The rock-solid truth: tech specialists are people. Propose them to take breaks to recharge. Make additional sync calls when necessary to add live comments. Ask all the questions you get, or let newcomers know when you are going to come back to this topic if you have to clarify some facts.
Sharing personal experiences can show newcomers that it is okay to feel a bit frustrated the first day.
How to Confirm That It Was a Successful Onboarding?
Collect Feedback from People You Hire
We’ve included a Feedback section when developed our successful onboarding process. Not to make people struggling with their memories, let them share their opinion right in the end of their onboarding. Include such a step as a standardized but not obligatory task in your automated onboarding system.
Reading the reviews from tech teams we hire for our clients motivates us to make Outstaff Your Team onboarding even better.
“From the very first interview till the end of onboarding, I was captivated by the whole process that significantly differed from other experiences I’ve had during the job interviews and onboarding. I feel well-prepared and comfortable after the onboarding, as I’m informed about all the necessary things, all my questions are answered, and I know who to contact if I have more questions. So far I’ve had only positive thoughts about the Outstaff Your Team and all the people I’ve met. Can’t wait to get started on the project!”
— Sopho, Project Manager
“Thank you, team! You’ve made a normally intimidating process more comfortable, efficient and informative.”
— Nyasha, Full-stack Developer
“Everything went smoothly, and the process felt comfortable overall.”
— Ilia, JavaScript Developer
If to sum up, the word “comfortable” is the most precise description of the successful onboarding process.
Check if Your Onboarding Program is Reusable
Is your onboarding not only flexible and personalized, but also automated? A structured onboarding program serves as a version control system for code: you transfer knowledge, ensuring that essential information is documented, accessible, and consistently updated and delivered to new developers.
Now, you know how we, at Outstaff Your Team, arrange successful onboarding of new employees to empower talent management services for IT companies. When you task us with hiring dedicated software engineers, UI/UX designers, and other tech staff, we give them the necessary input for a long-term partnership during the onboarding, and then make well-being check-ins. No secret techniques — only transparent and well-built communication.
FAQ
How do you onboard a new developer to a team?
Notify the team in advance about the new developer's start date, role, and background to ensure a warm welcome. To onboard a developer, set up the necessary infrastructure, hardware, software, and access rights, so they can hit the ground running. Familiarize the newcomer with the company's culture, values, and routines. Provide an overview of essential policies, such as working hours, vacation requests, etc. Offer comprehensive documentation that covers the team's development processes, coding standards, and tools used. Walk a new developer through the codebase to provide an understanding of the existing projects, architecture, and design patterns. Handle the administrative part on the first day. During the first months, pay special attention to arranging coding training sessions, on-peer code reviews, and well-being check-ins.
What are the 5 Cs of onboarding?
The 5 Cs of onboarding are principles which help you make it comprehensive and engaging.
Check if the newcomer Complies with legal and company requirements. All the paperwork should be completed.
Clearly outline the role, responsibilities, and performance expectations, and Clarify if your hires understand everything.
Present the company's Culture, values, and norms.
Foster Connection between team members. Provide a mentor, a go-to person for questions and guidance.
Enable the new team member to make Contributions from the start, encouraging them to share their ideas and perspectives.
Stay in tune
Curated Tech HR buzz delivered to your inbox
Quick Search
