A New Hire During The New Normal: Virtual Onboarding at EVgo

The first day, maybe week, okay fine – first month at a new job has always been nerve racking for me. What do I wear? Will my new team be welcoming? Will I make friends? Imposter syndrome at an all-time high, I just hope someone will invite me to lunch. But my biggest fear when starting a new job is that there won’t be a mapped-out onboarding plan – leaving me to spend most of my first few days, maybe even weeks, wondering what I should be working on. And that fear was only amplified as I headed into the uncharted territory of virtual onboarding and prepared myself for my first day at EVgo – sitting at the same at-home workstation I had been parked at for months, waiting to meet the top half of my new co-workers over zoom.

 

So, when my new boss, EVgo’s VP of Account Management showed up to our first check in with a detailed three-week long excel sheet of an onboarding plan, I sighed the deepest of relief sighs. “Thank the virtual onboarding gods”, I mouthed to myself (careful to turn my video off for a second to do so) – and we jumped straight in. For the first few weeks my schedule was filled with one-on-one trainings, meetings I’d be popping in on just to shadow, and blocks of time for me to dive into company policy, training, and relevant contract documents for my new role.

I joined the team in October, so I wasn’t EVgo’s first virtual hire. With a few months of practice under their belt by the time I came on board, it was clear that EVgo had invested a lot of time and energy into creating a virtual onboarding experience that would put its new employees at ease and make us feel welcomed and supported. One that included a large library of training videos, calendar invites to virtual social gatherings, a “mentor” from a different department, and an introduction to EVgo’s “EVgoat” point system that encourages employees to meet in the virtual breakroom and join company all-hands meetings and birthday celebrations.

 My biggest EVgoat prize so far – taking second place in the company’s virtual Halloween costume contest!

 But it wasn’t just the clear onboarding plan and balanced schedule that made my virtual onboarding experience such a pleasant one. Many of EVgo’s employees have worked remotely long before the COVID-19 pandemic made it a requirement. Although our headquarters is in Los Angeles, my manager is based in North Carolina, one of my direct teammates in Nashville, and numerous others zoom in from the Bay Area, Washington D.C., and across the U.S. Community had already been built beyond the walls of the L.A. office and this served as a strong foundation upon which to build a new H.Q – one located in my home just as much as it is in the home of my colleague in New York.

As remote work continues to be the norm and EVgo looks to expand our team with talented and diverse EV enthusiasts from across the country, I look forward to welcoming them in the same way I was – with a clear onboarding roadmap and an invitation to meet for coffee in the virtual breakroom!

Visit our EVgo Careers page to see our current openings.