The Part We Didn’t Tell You in Your Job Interview
Finally, after finding the right job, welcome to the company. Now ignore the professional expertise you have worked your entire career to acquire, and spend the next 9 months studying to be a software technician on our 173 platforms.
We are so happy to have you on board! Come right this way so I can introduce you to your buddy. We used to pair new employees with human colleagues, but after reviewing the data, we found it was hurting productivity. Now we use personalized bots or “virtual buddies.” They’re friendlier anyways.
Here is your desk. To start, let’s get you set up on email, calendar, group chat, our internal meeting software, our external meeting software, our document sharing platform, the website we use to order lunch, our dietary restriction database, the forum we use to talk about our weekend plans, the forum where we talk about our cats and this Fitbit to track your caffeine intake.
Now that the easy stuff is out of the way, we’ll get you up and running on our HR systems. This is the one you’ll use to track your hours and input performance reviews. Not to be confused with this separate platform for vacation requests, and another for talent referrals. You won’t be using these on a regular basis, but you’ll still be expected to know how when the times comes.
I almost forgot! We use a project management software, expense management platform, 17 analytics plugins, and of course a customer relationship management platform. I remember you mentioned you have experience using the same CRM in your previous position… that’s great, but unfortunately won’t really help you much here. We have completely customized the platform to fit our unique business needs — you probably won’t even recognize it.
Learning software is like learning a new language — and everyone knows the most effective way to learn a new language is full immersion. As part of your onboarding process, you will attend a series of 10-hour training lectures with no breaks. You might forget your native language and all previous skills, but you will at least have grasped the basic premise of a CRM.
Bill, our in-house software evangelist, occasionally dozes off from the monotony of his own voice. If that happens just tap him on the shoulder and remind him how fascinating you find report editing. We strongly believe in empowering employees to continue pursuing excellence both during and after the training period. That’s why we have also uploaded all software manuals to an online knowledge base that no one has access to.
Each platform is so different, but they’re all equally critical for your non-technical role here. When we say learning curve, what we really mean is several learning curves. Of course, you have to factor in automatic software updates. They occur at random and often render all your previous knowledge on a given system obsolete…
Also, don’t forget that we are a very innovative company, so the minute a hot, new digital tool hits the market we implement it into our workflow. The value you bring to the company depends on your ability to master every single one of our internal software platforms new and old, so between us — start getting comfortable with YouTube tutorials.
This process isn’t easy. If you come from a highly technical background it can take as little as six months… but usually closer to nine. We are here to guide and support you during this journey. I mean, Karen from Marketing can help if you really get stuck, but try not to bother her too much — especially not before her second cup of coffee or for at least 3 hours after lunch.
Oh my goodness, I know what you must be thinking! Don’t worry! You won’t have to manually keep track of all your passwords — we have software for that too.
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