Discussion on: What is your on-boarding process at your company?

We have a Trello board we use that outlines all of the tasks we need to go through to onboard a new developer. The goal of the board is to layout all of the tasks the new staff, the hiring manager and the hiring team so each onboarding is standard.

The board is broken into 7 lanes:

Before the first day

This lane is used to remind the hiring manager of all of the things they need to confirm prior to the new staff starting. Adding the staff's start date to the calendar, confirming laptop, onboarding onto any systems that aren't automated, etc...

First Day

This lays out the first day for the new staff. It includes things like a checkin with the hiring manager. Setting up their local machine (done with a "team buddy"). Going over the system basics and introduction to the team. An office tour and finally an end of day checkin with the hiring manager.

First Week

In this lane there's a bunch of cards that the hiring manager and new staff go through on the first week. This includes introducing the new member to the department, onboarding them onto the various systems, going over HR stuff, coding standards, etc... We also do a team lunch in the first week as a kind of ice breaker. At the end of the first week the hiring manger will also sit down and go over the goals with the new staff, set up 1:1's set performance goals and set out expectations.

First Month

In the first month we'll go over goals, learn about all of the various programs available, set up learning programs with the other teams in Technology. We try to spread out learning over the first month as much as possible to avoid overwhelming the new staff.

First Three Months

In this lane there's more longer term things to complete. There's training on how the company does business, developing within your role, meeting with your VP, shadowing relevant departments. The goal of this lane is to set them up for success to complete their probation.

First Year

There's only a couple of cards in this lane but the goal is to help the new staff connect with others, development themselves as leaders and continue to learn about the business.

Good to know...

There's a number of informational cards in this lane. Where to get food, what sports team you can join, a note about our yearly conference and offsites, who to contact for stationary, etc...

We've gone through a number of iterations of this board but I'm pretty proud of it so far. We've onboarded 10-15 staff using it so far and the rest of the company has started to adopt it.