Remote Developer Onboarding: Tips for CTO on How to Make a Successful Remote Onboarding

The onboarding process is an essential part of the hiring process, whether it is a contractor or an in-house engineer. It takes about a month for newcomers to fully join the team and learn all the aspects of the development process.

Remote developer onboarding checklist

This process begins after the candidate accepts the offer. It separates into three phases, during which you, as an employer, should provide all the necessary information and support for candidates to join the team quickly.

The onboarding process is critical for the developer to join the team more effortlessly and not leave the company. Each of the following steps is essential to ensure that everything about the company and its processes is understandable to the engineer. Doing something poorly during the onboarding can influence the programmer, which may cause them to leave the company. It, in turn, will cause you to spend a lot more time redoing the searching and hiring process.

Preparing for a contractor’s first day

The first phase of onboarding is about preparing all the needed documentation and setting up communication channels. Here are the required steps you should do in the pre-onboarding stage.

• Prepare information about the company.
• Find a mentor to help the candidate go through the onboarding process.
• Set up goals that the candidate should achieve during the onboarding.
• Prepare technical documentation.
• Set up communication channels and other accounts needed to access the company’s software.

Onboarding

The onboarding stage involves introducing the engineer to the company, helping them join the team more effortlessly, and explaining their tasks. Here are some tips you should consider while doing the onboarding.

• Introduce the engineer to the company.
• Make a call with the presentation of the company and the developer’s role in the project.
• Assign a technical specialist who will help the developer with the project code.
• Assign responsibilities to the new developer without negative impact on the regular members of the development team.
• Discuss with the engineer your expectations for the trial period and the first months of their normal work.
• Do not assign the developer too complicated tasks; remember, they have a lot of documentation to read.
• Arrange regular calls with the ability to provide feedback from both the developer and you.

Post-onboarding activities

Post-onboarding phase helps to create a positive environment and productive developer’s work in the long term. To help a developer grow and be an essential part of the development team.

• Get and provide regular feedback from the developer and teammates.
• Set up clear long-term expectations for the engineer.
• Create regular calls to understand how the developer feels about the work, how their tasks are going and whether they need any work adjustments.

Wrap up

In the end, if talking about the onboarding, it is essential to understand that depending on how the process was carried out depends on whether the developer will want to continue working in the company. You should pay attention to each of the phases as they make the onboarding smooth and without misunderstanding. Such options as regular feedback and set up goals allow engineers to know what is expected from them and let them discuss it. Prepared documentation and a wisely selected technical specialist will help them to join the team and understand the development process faster. Read our blog to learn how to carry out the onboarding process well.