(On)boarding the MentorMate Plane

Job hunting often feels like a daunting, neverending task, and landing the right role is a welcomed end to the whole process. But while signing your offer letter signals the end of your search, it’s only the beginning of the next step in your journey: onboarding. At MentorMate, we know onboarding is crucial to how new employees feel about their new job. For us, onboarding is about more than just signing paperwork, giving you your equipment, and making team introductions. It’s an ongoing process for the first six months you’re here and helps foster your continued learning and development after onboarding ends. With that in mind, let’s look at our onboarding process.

MentorMate Onboarding: Before You Start

You might think that your onboarding begins on day one of your job, but at MentorMate, we begin the process immediately after you accept your offer. You’ll receive an email containing details about your first day — your start date, what time to start your first day, and whether you’ll attend the day one presentation online or in an office. You’ll also receive a personal message from MentorMate CEO Björn Stansvik that welcomes you to the family. Finally, you’ll gain access to your company email. Additionally, when new team members start, we introduce them to the rest of the company in a brief email that shares favorite apps, songs, hobbies, and food. Expect an email asking you to shed some light on these topics.

MentorMate Onboarding: Week One and Two

Welcome to MentorMate! Your first day with us begins with a presentation covering our history, clients, roles, mission, vision, and values. We also cover administrative information about accounts, paid leaves, and risk zones related to the COVID-19 pandemic. You also learn about significant web tools, benefits, our referral and gamification programs, the career path at MentorMate, learning and development opportunities, and our review process.

If you’ve chosen to work from one of our offices on your first day, our HR team takes you on an office tour and introduces you to other team members, including your lead. You watch the presentation online and meet your colleagues virtually if you’re working from home.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed when joining a new company and having a bunch of new information thrown at you all at once. We also invite you to an online onboarding course to further explore more general topics at your own pace. It explains how remote work functions at MentorMate, how to set up a VPN, what our timesheet management system is, and how you can request time off, among other things.

During your second week, you go deeper into the working methods at our company by attending a presentation on Scrum (the agile framework we use) and JIRA (our project management tool).

MentorMate Onboarding: End of Month One

At MentorMate, we rely a lot on learning and development for the successful growth of our specialists. Around the end of your first month, you’ll attend an online presentation introducing you to the many learning and development opportunities you can take advantage of. These trainings are grouped into four areas: technical knowledge and skills, soft skills and customer focus, English language, and leadership. The presentation also outlines our internal knowledge sharing initiatives and explains how you can use the individual learning budget every MentorMater is entitled to.

Since we are a service company dealing with many different global clients, we created a presentation on client relations and cultural awareness. In this presentation, you’ll get tips and tricks on improving communication with predominantly U.S. clients.

Research shows that new employees conclude whether they feel welcome within the first 30 days at their workplace. To measure how you’ve settled into your new role, how you feel as part of the team, and whether you received enough resources to do your job and encouragement to grow professionally, you’ll receive a survey to complete. Historically, the data we gather from these surveys indicate that our new colleagues are largely satisfied with the information they’ve received, the tools they have access to, and their professional development opportunities.

MentorMate Onboarding: Months Three and Four

Generally speaking, the onboarding process varies from company to company but usually takes a few months. At MentorMate, onboarding overlaps with the six-month probation period that ends with reviewing your performance from day one. To help you better understand how we evaluate your work, we’ve developed a presentation on our review process. You get acquainted with the assessment criteria, how to fill in your self-assessment form, and what your goals for the future are.

MentorMate Onboarding: End of Month Six

Your first six months at our company have passed. If we’re feeling good with one another, you continue your journey on board with the MentorMate crew. The onboarding process is officially over. We intend that you already feel engaged with the company, have adjusted to our operations, structure, and culture, and are on track to excel at your skills and expertise.

In the past two years, the work model has changed significantly not only at MentorMate but also in software development on a global scale. Onboarding has also evolved to adapt to the work-from-home wave that started in 2020. It has become even more critical for someone who works remotely and rarely sees their teammates in-person to receive a proper introduction, support, and understanding when joining a new team.