First Time in a New Class. Why Mentors Are Needed in IT.

[Man]

Let's go back to school for a moment. Imagine that fate has forced you to change schools. The school year begins, you enter a new class for the first time. The teacher solemnly introduces you to your future classmates. Dozens of glances are directed at you - assessing, interested, sometimes hostile. In these first minutes and hours, your place in the difficult school hierarchy is laid. Everything depends on your actions, first words and deeds. It is no wonder that you experience severe stress.

First time in a new class​

Now let's get back to our time. You change jobs and enter an open-plan office for the first time. Or, more relevant these days, you join an online department meeting. Of course, everything is not as dramatic here as in the school jungle. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that you not only have to join an unfamiliar team, but also have to figure out new processes, tools, and rules of work in a new company in a short period of time. It's like transferring to a school with a different curriculum. The subjects are the same, but the textbooks are new, and the teaching methods are completely different.

The teacher introduces you to the class — the leader introduces you to your future colleagues. He gives a welcoming speech in the format: “Dear colleagues, this is so-and-so, he will be working for us as such-and-such. Please love and favor him.” Then everything usually happens according to an accelerated program: “Here is your desk, passwords on a piece of paper, the cooler is there, the cafe is on the third floor, and the recreation area is here. Work, dear.” This is where your adaptation as a newcomer ends. You sit down at your desk, they immediately forget about you, and an exciting independent immersion into new processes begins.

In other words, the teacher introduces you solemnly, and then you are on your own. It is good if there is a mentor in the class: “Sit here. Calm down, I will explain and show you everything. Here we have the excellent students, here are the whiners and tattletales, there are the tough ones, and it is better not to go to Syroezhkin at all. Don’t take fish cutlets from the canteen.” But this is not always the case. Often, a new student-employee is left to his own devices and is forced to independently study all the tools and processes.

Adaptation must be adaptive​

Let's look at the adaptation process from the company's side. For obvious reasons, it seeks to shorten the adaptation period so that the newcomer can start working on commercial tasks as soon as possible and start bringing in money or at least help do so. On the other hand, the company seeks to minimize resources for training. After all, spending more than half of the precious time of the department's leading specialists on the adaptation of new employees is an unaffordable luxury.

It is necessary to find the golden mean - the very point at which the necessary balance will be maintained and the goals and interests of all three participants in the process will be taken into account: the newcomer, the mentor and the company. It is unlikely that it will be possible to formulate universal recipes on how to do this. After all, each department in an IT company has its own specific features, its own set of knowledge that needs to be transferred to the newcomer, its own training program. But still, the adaptation processes in different departments are somewhat similar.

The mentor is always there​

A mentor is most often a leading specialist of the department. The mentor's responsibilities usually include transferring secret knowledge about development tools and the subject of development itself. The mentor conducts classes with the newcomer, monitors his progress, controls the learning process, and upon completion of adaptation, together with the head of the department, carefully integrates the new employee into the work process. All general questions are also addressed to the mentor: "Where can I have lunch?", "Who should I ask for access?", "How can I find meeting room 35-B?"

As a tech lead at Bercut, I train all new employees in our department. I have a comprehensive program prepared, according to which I tell newcomers about all internal processes, tools and methods. I really enjoy training my future colleagues, sharing my knowledge. And it is always just nice to help a good person - with information and support.

Mentors for mentors​

We even had a special mentor training program organized at Bercut. It consists of two parts: training to develop basic knowledge of mentoring and periodic post-trainings to consolidate the material.

During the courses, future teachers — first-class technical specialists without a pedagogical education — get acquainted with all aspects of the difficult process of teaching adults. They learn how to optimally build a teaching program, how to praise, guide and give feedback to students, how to plan the delivery of material, how to adjust the speed of learning. It is also important to be able to conduct classes calmly, evenly and kindly, take into account the individual characteristics of each student and provide them with comprehensive support. But would you like it if, at a new place, you were taught by, say, a sullen, taciturn foreman?

During post-trainings, our mentors constantly improve their qualifications. For example, we discuss various interesting and complex cases that we have encountered in our teaching practice. And, of course, we exchange experiences and our developed methods.

In this article, I want to share with you several useful rules for onboarding new employees that I have formulated for myself through trial and error. Perhaps some of them will seem obvious to you. But from my own experience, I know that the obvious truths that lie on the surface often come to mind last.

1. Careful planning is the key to success​

You may ask: how can you start any activity without planning? But, unfortunately, it also happens that employees are adapted without any clear plan, guided by very vague ideas about what and how they need to be taught.

At the very beginning, I also tried to carry out adaptation without a clearly formulated plan (“After all, I already had all this in my head!”) - I do not advise anyone to repeat this. Without planning, it is very easy to miss something important, and it is almost impossible to correctly arrange the order of topics. Now I know for sure that a detailed hierarchical lesson plan is the basis of adaptation, on which the entire process is built.

By the way, the plan is not a monolith. It can and should always be adjusted as the lessons progress. After all, all beginners are different, with different learning abilities, with different initial knowledge. Sometimes I change the order of topics as needed, sometimes I skip some points or add new ones. But a basic plan is still necessary so that the mentor and student always have a clear idea of what exactly needs to be studied. Everyone hates long installation processes without a "progress bar"? It's the same here - an optimistically rotating wheel is not enough, you need percentages.

2. Theory is the foundation of everything​

Theory is often underestimated. I myself had the idea to start training new employees right from practice. It would seem, why would a specialist with experience need some theory? But then I realized that newcomers who come to the company are acutely lacking "local" theoretical knowledge: how the processes in the company are organized, what is its organizational structure, how your department is integrated into these processes, how work tasks are generally performed... And where, in the end, is this mysterious negotiation room 37-B?!

And, of course, theory includes information about the technology stack used in your department. Even if a new employee has general knowledge about the technology, there are always specifics of using certain standards that it would be useful to tell him about.

It is with this theory that I begin the adaptation of newcomers - I move from the general to the specific, so that they have a complete picture of the company's processes and the methods for using technologies and standards.

3. Time for action - alternation of activities​

If the newcomer is an intern, then he is most likely still a student or has recently stopped being one. He has not yet forgotten how to study and systematically acquire knowledge. But in most cases, a new employee is already an established specialist in his field with experience in other companies. This aspect must be taken into account during the adaptation process. Now I constantly remind myself that I am not teaching a student accustomed to daily acquisition of new knowledge. Therefore, intensive multi-hour classes are a bad idea. Everything must be done gradually and it is necessary to alternate the activities of the newcomer.

I have developed the following scheme: every morning I conduct a theoretical or practical two-hour lesson with a new employee. Then the newcomer works independently for the rest of the time. As my university professor of higher mathematics used to say, it is time for “independent, multi-hour reflection on the material.” At the same time, the student must consolidate the knowledge that we studied in the morning. This is a kind of practical homework - try to repeat the actions that I showed him.

In addition, during the remaining working hours, the employee reads additional materials (books, articles, pages of the corporate knowledge base) and watches video tutorials. To do this, it is imperative to provide him with a clear sequential list of these materials. So the newcomer can always independently alternate between different types of activities.

4. Knowledge base - information support​

In order to comply with the previous rule, there should at least be a knowledge base with additional materials for independent study. I try not to forget about this and constantly replenish the base with new relevant materials.

It often happens that the corporate wiki portal contains materials only for experienced employees - new regulations, analysis of complex cases, additional information for specialists. At the same time, a newbie who is still poorly oriented in elementary knowledge will not be able to benefit from these materials. I understand this very well - I have been through this myself.

Now I try to periodically add to the knowledge base not only materials for experienced employees, but also descriptions of basic actions, reference information. And I also diligently accumulate recordings and presentations of seminars, workshops that I conduct in my department.

All this information helps me optimize the learning process. I can always select several topics for independent study. By the way, practice has shown that experienced employees often turn to such information to refresh their memory and systematize their knowledge. After all, we all sometimes secretly open "manuals" to remember some basic command?

5. Playing four hands​

On what computer should I conduct practical training with a new employee? Very often, the mentor performs all actions on his own machine - it is more convenient, everything is set up, there is a familiar environment. I did the same at first, but then I realized that it was not the best idea. After all, with this approach, all the results of these actions will remain on my computer. If the newcomer wants to look at something, repeat, clarify something during independent work, he will not have such an opportunity.

There is another peculiarity - on my computer all the numerous settings have been set up for a long time, the development environment has been deployed, the necessary utilities and auxiliary applications have been installed. On a beginner's computer all this may not be there.

If I conduct all demonstrations on a new employee's computer, I will be able to notice all the shortcomings in time and help to perform all the necessary installations and settings. In my experience, I know that this reduces the time for performing technical settings by half, and sometimes even by three times - where a newbie would spend a day figuring out all the nuances of the installation, I will quickly do it "with my left hand and my eyes closed."

In remote work conditions, this rule also applies. There are many ways to connect remotely to a newbie's computer during a conference. The best option is to have two cursors on the screen: both the teacher and the student can control the work at the same time.

6. We have all the moves recorded​

We are all used to taking notes of lectures at the institute. During the adaptation, the employee can also record what I tell him if he wants. At least I do not forbid him to do so. But a much more effective way is to save a video recording of the lesson. For this, you can use both the capabilities of the platform on which the lesson is held and third-party applications that perform video screen capture. The main thing is that not only my actions on the computer are recorded, but also all my words, filled with "precious knowledge and great wisdom."

Sometimes it seems that saving such a recording is unnecessary. But time after time my students tell me how they reviewed the recordings of the most difficult moments of practical classes in order to repeat my actions on their own. Video recording is always more visual and effective than any notes.

By the way, here's another bonus tip: sometimes it's good to make mistakes during a lesson. But mistakes must be acknowledged and corrected. Mistakes are always remembered better than a monotonous stream of correct, verified facts and rules. So sometimes I allow myself to make mistakes in some important moments, so that I can correct myself later.

7. Test assignment: strict assessments and exams are not our method​

At the end of the adaptation of a new employee, I always ask him to complete a test task. This is not a commercial work task, but a separate task. The newcomer comes up with the topic of the task himself. But the methods and techniques for its implementation are strictly regulated. I have compiled a detailed list of those solutions, techniques and tools that must be used in the test work. The test task is needed not to give grades, but so that the student himself can check how well he has learned everything that I told him and showed him in our classes.

Based on the results of the test task, I always give feedback - I point out inaccuracies and errors so that the employee can correct them. If necessary, I check several iterations of the test work. But the initiative should always come from the student - if he wants to bring the work to perfection, then, of course, I will help him with this.

How to measure the effectiveness of adaptation​

All this is, of course, good, but in our business, numbers are important. How can I measure the effectiveness of all my new methods, programs and adaptation tools?

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of training, I came up with a key metric, which I simply called "Average time to complete adaptation." This is the time interval between the date of the first lesson with a newcomer and the date of completion of the first commercial task by the new employee.

There was an idea to move the second date closer, for example, to take the date of completion of work on the test task. But then the indicator would not reflect the effectiveness of training, would not include the first experience of the newcomer working on a real task. In addition, at the beginning we try to give newcomers approximately similar simple tasks, so the time it takes each employee to complete them is important.

Mine are definitely the best

Let's continue the conversation​

After the adaptation, as a mentor, I do not leave the employee alone with commercial tasks. I try to constantly support newcomers, answer all their questions. And I also never tire of repeating: "Ask as many questions as possible!" After all, it will always be more effective to get a quick qualified answer than to spend a day solving a long-known problem.

But at the same time, I try to organize the process so that the employee switches to an independent, autonomous mode of work more and more every day. After all, my main task is to prepare a professional team member.

Many employees who have just joined our company are pleasantly surprised by such a well-thought-out adaptation program. They say that in other organizations it is either completely absent or built in a chaotic and haphazard manner. But at Bercut they are given a lot of time and attention, they are taught everything, everything is demonstrated and explained.

To be honest, sharing knowledge is my favorite part of my job. And, of course, I continue to learn myself. I try to think through and implement new training methods. I think about how to make the onboarding process for new employees even better. After all, there is no limit to perfection in any business.

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