Starting a new job in Corona times

As a fast-growing startup, it was not easy for us to get people on board during the Corona times. But with an increasing number of projects it became very important for us to hire and onboard new employees. Usually, a qdiver's onboarding event takes place with all of us spending a day in our office, introducing ourselves, and concluding with a team dinner. But, during Corona, as most of us are working remotely, this part was difficult. But we were still able to onboard two of our new colleagues successfully during the pandemic.

Here is the feedback from them.

Axel:

"Starting a new job in the Covid-19 era, fresh out of university, naturally comes along with a lot of anxiety: How do I get to know my colleagues? Can I get rid of all my newbie questions, even if you're not sitting next to each other in the office?

With qdive, however, none of this was a problem at all. Aside from the fact that I got to know half of the team during the application process, I was already run over with the company culture in the first few weeks. Be it virtual coffee breaks or team meetings that take place regularly, or simply, the attention of my colleagues. As soon as they sensed that I could use support somewhere, a spontaneous meeting would come flying in.

In the middle of the second week, I got feedback from one of my external colleagues on my first project that it seemed like I had been with the company for 3 years. When I thought this through in reflection, I realized that I had in fact already completely settled in. I felt like I had known everyone on the team for months. There was no excessive caution and the typical fears of misbehaving, saying the wrong things, or making mistakes were simply not there anymore. How my colleagues at qdive did it remains a company secret, but it must have something to do with this "people, culture and mindset" thing".

Samuel:

"Last year I was hired by qdive. I was really excited about joining this energetic startup with its attractive personality and philosophy. You know what happened next – Corona arrived. I would not be able to be physically in our office. So how was it, to start a new job remotely?

Well, naturally, there is nothing like meeting your colleagues personally. But the digital variant of “Hello world, here I am” worked surprisingly well as well. We organized weekly coffee breaks and kept in touch over Slack. Interesting projects followed soon enough and looking back I realize how much I have learned here, especially regarding DevOps and deploying applications to the cloud".

Thanks for the feedback  

And by the way: we are still looking for new colleagues @qdive [Data Scientist]   

#peoplecultureandmindset #datascience