Ask HN: What's the best welcome you've ever had when you first started your job?

3 points by andrewoons 10 years ago | 2 comments

Since we're in the process of hiring our first employees, we want to give them the best welcome possible to our current team of 3.

What's the best way you've ever been welcomed at a new job? Think about activities, swag you've received, the general process or anything else.

I'm curious what the best stories are and hope to incorporate some elements into our own company culture!

oaf357 10 years ago |

I actually just started a new job and my first day was amazing. First, my boss gave me a tour of the office. Followed by showing me to my desk. On the desk was a working phone, monitors, folders, pens, paper, sticky notes, a tape dispenser, and two documents. The first document was essentially everything I needed to answer my spouse's questions about the new job (holidays, vacation accruals, pay dates, where to sign up for benefits, etc.). The second document was an org chart with everyone's name and title which was nice for reference when meeting new people. Shortly after wiping down the desk a person dedicated to getting my new laptop setup came in and made sure I had access to everything I would ever need. She literally brought everything new in box and started laying it all out for me. Next my immediate co-workers set about getting me access to systems and internal applications. By mid-afternoon on my first day I felt like I could start diving in and solving problems. It was a truly refreshing experience especially when you consider it was December 28th.

pedalpete 10 years ago |

Not sure if you can take anything from this as I work for a large gov't research org.

My day started with meeting the members of my team I hadn't met in the interview process and we all had a coffee together. Then I got my workstation set-up.

After about an hour, I was told to join a tour that was being given of the different research projects in the company. The idea being that I would get a good feel for what else was happening outside my team.

The tour was 3 hours long! Incredibly interesting all the way and I tried to absorb as much as I could about these projects (the tour was actually for two very important and smart people from outside the org and I was just tagging along).

When I got back to my desk, my boss was like "where have you been? we thought you might have quit!" When I told her I went on the tour like she had said she mentioned the tours only usually last about 40 minutes, and that apparently when we switched locations, that was supposed to be the end of my tour, but instead I had stayed on and seen things that even she had never seen!

So, with that sorted, we went to lunch as a team. On my return, I finished getting the project set-up and running, which is normally quite challenging but went fairly smoothly thanks to good documentation <- THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!

At 4, the design team had invited us around for :"daily afternoon tea", which included cake. I thought "this is the best place to work ever!"

It wasn't until the next day at 4 o'clock when I was getting ready for cake with the design team that I was informed that it was just a coincidence that they had cake on my first day and that it wasn't a daily occurence...unless I was going to supply the cake.

Either way, a very memorable and interesting day.