Onboarding & Training Initiatives

Employee Onboarding Program Details

The OG Program

I first developed the employee onboarding program outlined below as part of eventcore’s FARM Team—a dedicated group created to centralize company knowledge and establish a structured onboarding process. The initial iteration of the program successfully reduced new hire training time from one year to just one month.

The program included mock technical specifications, a mock registration event and front-end website, hands-on practice scenarios, and a templated task list managed through Teamwork. Leveraging Teamwork not only provided secondary training on the project management tool we used, but also enabled a team of mentors to track and support each new hire’s progress.

These “onboarding project boards” were designed to serve as an ongoing reference throughout an employee’s tenure. Each task included both documentation from the internal doc site and corresponding hands-on exercises. However, since documentation locations could change over time, I created a centralized training page on the doc site rather than linking tasks directly to all the individual relevant doc site pages. This approach ensured that only the training page needed to be maintained, while keeping all onboarding boards accurate and up to date. As a secondary benefit, this structure also helped new hires become familiar with the doc site and understand how to use it as a valuable resource.

Ultimately, the strength of the program lay in its emphasis on hands-on training. When you ask people how they learn best, some say by reading documentation, others by watching videos—but nearly all say by doing. How many times in your life have you made a mistake and thought, “Well, I’ll never make that mistake again”?

By thoughtfully curating project specifications and hands-on practice scenarios, we control both the information provided (or withheld) and the logic—or lack of logic—in simulated client requests. This allows trainees to encounter realistic, flawed tasks in a safe environment where mistakes are expected and instructive. Through this early exposure, they learn to think critically and adaptively, rather than simply following steps.

For more information on the method to our madness, review my onboarding program proposal below.

The Sequel

After eventcore was acquired by Stova, an entirely new group of individuals needed to be onboarded to the platform. The second iteration of the onboarding program was built on the same foundational learning principles as the original but received a bit of a glow-up. Hands-on practice scenarios were moved out of Teamwork tasks and into Word documents to allow space for notes, additional context, and more interactive Q&A between new hires and mentors via comments.

I also restructured the task list to align with the logical content organization found on the doc site, which had been developed through extensive information architecture work. Additionally, I migrated the task list from Teamwork to Smartsheet to reflect the company’s transition to using Smartsheet for project task management.

Onboarding Program Proposal

Working Process Example

Instructions

Getting Started

1. Assign Mentor
2. Copy template over (save as new) to member’s folder within smartsheet: [#URL TO SMARTSHEET TEMPLATE HERE#]
3. Review the instructions on the doc site: https://[#DOC SITE TRAING PAGE URL HERE#]/infrastructure/onboarding
   • Review all documentation
   • Complete practice scenarios/questions
4. Determine project for new team member to shadow

Objective: For each grey-highlighted row, or “lesson”, of your onboarding SmartSheet, review the corresponding documentation, complete the Hands-On Practice Worksheets, and complete any additional tasks listed. You may review the documentation while simultaneously completing the worksheets. You may also track down People Who Do Things and ask them any questions to help you complete your worksheet. These are not a test; they are purely to help you learn by doing instead of learning by just reading or watching, which we believe helps people understand the “why” instead of just the “how-to”.

1. The Order column of your Smartsheet will tell you which lesson to complete first. You will have to jump around your the sheet a bit, but you should always complete the lessons in the order listed.
2. Once you find your next lesson, each white row nested underneath it will be some combination of tasks (will all start with “TASK:”), worksheets (will all start with “WORKSHEET:”), and documentation (these will just be listed with no prefix). If there is a worksheet, there will be a direct link to the worksheet in the Description column.
3. The documentation needed to complete a worksheet or task will be nested underneath. You can use the blue, yellow, and grey-highlighted rows to help you locate the corresponding documentation on this page. This information will also be listed in your worksheet. All documentation links will always be found on this page of the doc site.
   • Each row on your onboarding SmartSheet corresponds with a sub-nav item/content section, header, sub-header, or list item on this page.
     • Yellow-highlighted rows correspond with each of this page’s sub-nav items/content sections
     • Blue-highlighted rows of your SmartSheet correspond with each header (all caps, dotted underline) within a particular content section on this page of the doc site
     • Grey-highlighted rows correspond with each sub-header (can be identified by the finger icon) of a particular header within a content sections on this page of the doc site
     • White documenation rows correspond with each list item (can be identified by the checkmark icon) under a particular sub-header and header within a content sections on this page of the doc site

Use the below chart to see an example of you can use your SmartSheet and the instructions from each Worksheet to locate the corresponding documentation.

Example Hands-On Practice Scenarios & Answer Key

---

Applicant HTML Assessment

This test was designed as a basic HTML assessment for job applicants. While its primary function was to evaluate HTML and CSS skills, it also aimed to gauge how candidates handle inconsistencies and vague requirements commonly found in client-provided specifications.

Email Mockup & Content Spec Files

Below, you can see both the mockup and the content specification included in the assessment. Inconsistencies between the two documents—as well as omissions in the content spec—were intentionally included.

HTML Template File

The generic HTML email template code used across all builds was also included to assess how well applicants could navigate code they didn’t write themselves and follow provided instructions.