What will my colleagues be like? What should I wear? How will my first day look like? Which tasks will wait for me?
These kind of questions swirled through my mind when I started my internship in the Technical Communication team here at ePages two months ago. To be honest, I was pretty nervous and felt some butterflies in my stomach when I opened the ePages door for the first time. But already on my first day, I noticed that I will have a great time and don’t need to worry at all. Let me tell you why.
The onboarding
The first days are the most important ones. Everything is new. New city. New people. New tasks. The colleagues at ePages managed to make me handle that in a really pleasant way.
The first ePagees I met in person were two colleagues from HR. They organized a welcome breakfast accompanied by a short presentation concerning company structure, special events, and general HR information. This way I received a good overview and became a little bit more relaxed. Afterwards I was invited to an office tour where I got to know most of my new colleagues and tried to remember as many of their names as I could 😉. This way I also met the different teams and learned about their main tasks. I ended up in my new office and had some time to organize my new desk and have a first chat with my own team which is UX & Content.
Being the “new one”, I had a lot of questions and didn’t understand all the internal terms and processes right away. But who doesn’t have these problems at the beginning? At ePages everyone seemed to remember this situation and was really helpful. During the first week they prepared some really useful presentations to make me comfortable with GitHub, Scrum and the different software versions. In addition to this personal support, there are some nice and handy technical features for new employees. For example, there is a terminology database that explains many important and frequent words and concepts. This way you can easily look up a new word or reread one you’ve already heard. Besides, there is a page where you can find all ePages colleagues in case you need to remember a name. This is especially helpful for the first days.
The colleagues
Talking of colleagues, without them it would have been impossible to feel welcome so fast. They always have a smile on their face and bring “little pleasures” to our day-to-day work.
Gute Laune-Kaffee für #UX und #TechWriting ladies @epagesdevs pic.twitter.com/NciBGDPAJn
— Birgit (@sol_y_mariposa) 21. März 2017
From the beginning, everyone was very open-minded, friendly, helpful, and patient. They never made me feel uncomfortable, even though I may have asked some annoying questions (especially for the developers). This way the working atmosphere has been pleasant from the first day on.
The team is quite young and very international. It is fun to work with so many different nationalities and communicate in different languages. At lunch time we eat together, enjoy the sun in the park (yes, there are sunny days in Hamburg!😉) or grab a coffee. This way I’ve been already shown many nice and delicious restaurants (my favorite one is a Chinese one) and got some insider tips for my first days in Hamburg.
The company events
Communication and transparency is really important here at ePages. To be always up-to-date, we have regular team meetings which gave me the possibility to get an overview of what is going on and who’s working at which topic.
Besides these weekly meetings we have some “special events” such as the ePages Hackathon or the ePages YOU. On our annual Hackathon event in March I got to know many other ePagees from Barcelona, New York, and Jena. As it was my first Hackathon, it was a really great experience for me and it was nice to meet a lot of new people.
The tasks
Making coffee and copies and doing all the annoying stuff nobody else wants to do? That’s how an internship could be… but not at ePages. Taking into account my wishes and interests, I got my own varied and interesting tasks. For example, I had the chance to research on some software localization tools such as PhraseApp or I was even engaged in making a video of our Hackathon. I am really happy, that I got my own responsible tasks and felt like a “real” colleague and not only like an intern.
The secret recipe
It is difficult to determine THE one reason why ePages made me feel welcome so fast. Let me present my top three:
- Great colleagues lead to a great working atmosphere.
- A structured and detailed onboarding simplifies the start tremendously.
- Undertaking responsible tasks makes you feel like part of the team.
After so many positive aspects, it won’t surprise you that I decided to write my master thesis here at ePages after I finished my internship. I’m already looking forward to continue my work here at ePages!😊
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