Engineer onboarding

Welcome, Engineer, front, back or full (sounds like a haircut). Whichever end you specialise in, we're delighted to have you onboard.

You will have your personalised 30, 60, and 90-day roadmap which your Recruitment and Onboarding (R&O) Manager Daniel, and CTO, Francisco, have drawn up based on technical expectations and your Career path.

The below will serve as a solid example of any engineer's onboarding experience at Significa.

Your first 30 days: learning

As you have read in Onboarding, your first month will be all about learning. The focus is to learn, learn, learn. Take advantage of this unique opportunity to take in as much as you can. There is plenty to read and re-read about Significa.

We know beginnings can be overwhelming, so we have broken things down a little to get you started; you should aim to use the following as a framework to get you going.

By the end of your first two weeks

• You have set up everything you need to do your job.

• You've had another meeting (after your entry interview on your first day) with Francisco about your ambitions and aspirations, regarding your career and personal path. These are informal chats where we can understand what excites you in your work.

• You know Onboarding inside out (yes, including that massive reading list).

• You've met all other departments and even sat in on other team meetings. You feel comfortable knowing who does what, in which projects, what their roles are, and a cool fact about them.

Design meetings are particularly engaging and great to get involved with, so much so Teresa wrote a blog about how they re-invented design meetings.

Having noted down some questions, you've sat down for some quick 15/30 minute chats with everyone on this list:

• Pedro Brandão, Founder of Significa and Front-end Developer.

• Ana Fernandes, Brand Manager.

• Mariana Gomes, Delivery Manager.

• Alec Norton, Operations Manager.

• André Resendes, Chief Design Officer and Co-founder.

• Rui Sereno, Managing Partner and Chief Business Development Officer.

By the end of your first month

You've had a check-in meeting at the end of each week with your R&O manager. You've taken a good look into our tech stack and shadowed other Front-end and Back-end developers. You're starting to get to grips with how we do things and our code quality standards, and you’ve started reviewing your peers’ code.

Day 30 to 60: Training

We will try to integrate you into your new life at Significa by getting you involved with one of our internal projects before you work on client projects.

This stage is designed to give you a lot of independence when tackling your role and responsibilities. You'll be held accountable for your work and encouraged to accomplish projects with limited guidance and a set deadline. You'll be working as you would in any client project.

The internal project itself will be defined depending on what’s happening at Significa at that given moment. Our URL shortener, our palette generator, and our proposals document all came from people being onboarded – both designers and developers.

In fact, you are looking at one of Nuno's onboarding projects. Yes, this very Handbook.

We've also developed The coolest office door and doorbell setup with the help of team members being onboarded. Yes, we are this geeky!

Day 60 to 90: Accountability

You know, as well as we do, most projects don't take 30 days to complete, so you may find yourself working on the internal project up to the end of your onboarding.

We know that working alone on a project can be an isolating experience, so we'll make sure you're busy with tasks and topics to bring forward to the development meetings, and we would love for you to lead a meeting with a presentation regarding your project.

We'll work with you on how to best structure this.

Shadowing

You'll soon be interacting with clients and taking on a project. It's a good time for you to shadow a peer again, focusing on Client communications. You'll be allocated to one project to follow and absorb whatever happens within it.

The idea here is that you are a shadow, not an active contributor to the project. Nonetheless, you should take some notes and share feedback with your peers about the work you are shadowing. Your input is valuable.

Check-ins

You'll meet with your mentor each Friday to look back at the week that was.

These check-ins will provide a space for you to share how you feel about your new surroundings and raise any questions you might have. Hopefully, these meetings will be of value to you and also contribute to improving our onboarding process going forward.

These are also an opportunity for your mentor to assess your evolution and integration into Significa. They should be sharing constructive feedback so you can take action and clarify any doubts regarding expectations whilst ensuring we can address any concerns you may have.

This all sounds quite formal, doesn't it? Don't worry! It's very chill. We aim for you to feel comfortable and for us all to learn from your onboarding experience so we can continue improving with you.

If, at any given time, we feel you are ready to move to real projects without completing your three-month onboarding, we will discuss it with you and on to a project you shall go.

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Wrap it up

And there we have it! It's time to close this chapter and start a new one. You are not so new now, and hopefully, you're well and truly feeling part of the team. You know your peers, our working process, and our methodology — you are ready to get going! We feel like proud parents as we see you set yourself free on your first Significa project.

But before we let you fly off from the onboarding, we must wrap it up. We'll give you consistent and constructive feedback about the whole thing. We'll be highlighting our reflections on your strengths and areas for improvement, considering three key aspects:

• Cultural fit and adaptation.

• Technical assessment of skills and evolution.

• Soft skills.

Your mentor will share their feedback using CultureAmp, so both of you can access it whenever necessary. This will come in handy during your first performance review and for setting up your development plan. More on that in Personal development.

This being said: fly, bird, fly! Good luck!

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Your feedback matters

Our onboarding processes are still very much a work in progress. Please don't hesitate to give us any feedback during and after your onboarding process.

• Was anything missing that could have been helpful for you regarding equipment?

• Did you have everything you needed to get up and running?

• Could anything have been clearer for you?

• What would you change in the onboarding to make it better?