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Successfully Onboarding a Junior Engineer in Three Steps by Emily Giurleo How you onboard someone to your team can have lasting effects on their professional success, growth, and happiness, but many teams treat onboarding as an afterthought. In this talk, you will learn how to successfully onboard a junior engineer in three steps, with the goals of building their trust, instilling confidence in their technical abilities, and enabling them to be an autonomous contributor to your team. __________ Emily Giurleo is a software engineer and avid Rubyist. After graduating from MIT with a degree in computer science, she spent two years working as a Ruby developer at Codecademy. She now works at MongoDB, where she helps maintain the Ruby Driver and Mongoid Object-Document Mapper. In her spare time, she enjoys building tech for good causes, reading fantasy novels, and petting cats.
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In her talk "Successfully Onboarding a Junior Engineer in Three Steps," Emily Giurleo emphasizes the importance of a structured onboarding process for junior engineers, highlighting its impact on their professional success and team integration. She outlines three critical steps to facilitate effective onboarding: setting expectations, delivering feedback, and assessing performance. ### Key Points: - **Involvement of Parties**: Successful onboarding requires collaboration among at least three parties: the manager or mentor, the existing team, and the junior engineer. All parties should be committed to the success of the junior engineer. - **Defining Goals**: Establishing clear onboarding goals is essential. Emily suggests three fundamental objectives: - Enable the new engineer to become an autonomous and productive team member. - Build the engineer's confidence in their skills to take on more responsibilities. - Foster trust between the new engineer, their mentor, and the rest of the team. - **Step 1: Setting Expectations**: - Define a roadmap for the new engineer's first few months, outlining milestones and learning objectives. - Communicate these expectations to the entire team, determining who will support the new engineer’s training. - Enable the junior engineer to contribute autonomously by ensuring they understand who to approach for help and what their responsibilities entail. - **Step 2: Delivering Feedback**: - Establish a culture of feedback where team members are comfortable sharing constructive criticism. - When providing feedback, be specific, focus on the impact of the engineer's actions, ask clarifying questions, redefine expectations, and allow them to correct their mistakes. - Balance feedback by acknowledging both successful and less successful work to ensure the junior engineer feels recognized and supported. - **Step 3: Assessing Performance**: - Before conducting performance reviews, ensure the team agrees on what constitutes acceptable performance. - Provide a performance review that reflects the engineer's actual contributions and progress, offering tangible rewards like promotions or raises when deserved. - Collect feedback on the onboarding process to improve in future instances. ### Conclusion: By following these steps, managers can create a positive onboarding experience that develops trust, fosters confidence, and ensures junior engineers become productive members of the team. This structured approach not only aids in the success of the new engineer but also addresses the need for a diverse and inclusive workforce by clearly communicating pathways to success, thus preventing uncertainty among new hires from varying backgrounds. Giurleo stresses the significant long-term benefits of investing in a thoughtful onboarding process, which ultimately contributes to a healthier, more effective team environment.
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