When you start a challenging new job, don’t you want to feel as prepared as possible? In your new position, you may find that you do not perform your job in the same way that made you successful in earlier posts. You will be asked to solve new problems in an unfamiliar environment.
To give candidates applying to Crossover the skills required to be successful in our company, we immerse them in a 4-week, paid training “Remote Camp.”
Remote Camp is another example of Crossover’s commitment to its workforce. The company is willing to invest in its workers so they can reach new heights.
How Remote Camp is different
Remote Camp is different from other programmer’s boot camps or the standard onboarding at a tech company. This training doesn’t teach you how to code; we expect you to know that already. It is designed to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
For candidates to make it into Remote Camp, they are tested for their programming skills and other abilities. Remote Camp teaches leading-edge programming practices based on the software factory theory. Our culture is unique: the work consists of 100% remote projects. We also work with daily, instead of monthly, goals.
Each week, candidates in Remote Camp need to reach a specific productivity level, or they won’t move forward. The lessons teach you better ways to code to save time and to scale to 100 plus organizations.
Developers love the challenge of working on a portfolio of hundreds of applications. Also, Crossover pays the same salary for Remote Camp as you would get in a full-time contract position with the company. Remote Camp is an exciting opportunity for people who want to challenge themselves and see if they are the best in the world.
Each candidate is expected to make an immediate impact in their first week on the job; we don’t expect them to learn on the job. For this reason, our rigorous training in Remote Camp is essential.
How Remote Camp works
First, we test our candidates to ensure that they have the technical skills required to succeed. None can be expected to know proprietary Crossover techniques. We test using real-work scenarios to equip participants to make an immediate impact. Our tests are challenging because we want to filter out participants and select those for Remote Camp who will graduate and succeed. Even if you don’t pass Remote Camp and graduate to the Crossover Marketplace, you are still learning industry-leading skills that make you desirable to other employers.
Remote Camp takes intelligent, qualified individuals who have passed Crossover’s rigorous tests, and in four weeks of training, equips them to be even more effective with the company’s tools and processes.
We pay candidates at a full-time salary rate so that participants can focus 100% of their attention on the training instead of worrying about getting paid or taking time off work. We advise workers not to do Remote Camp in addition to another job because of the amount of work involved.
The results for candidates are rewarding.
Java Chief Architect Festus Jejelowo said about his Remote Camp experience, “In the process, I picked up new skills like Google spanner, Gradle scripting, Jenkins integration and Pipeline scripting, test automation, and Dockers.”
Victor Zoubok, Java Chief Software Architect, said enthusiastically, “I’ve learned more about Crossover’s emphasis on measurable results and its culture of rewarding real achievements. I feel incredibly prepared to take on this new challenge!”
1–1 Meetings with managers included
After passing the Crossover tests, participants can start the training no later than at 12 noon each day. We ask each trainee to work in 3–4-hour time blocks, similar to working in a traditional office. However, this isn’t mandatory. Each participant works 8 hours a day with no more than two breaks to ensure that they have deep work periods.
The training includes 15 to 30- minute one-to-one meetings with managers for coaching or support weekly, or sometimes daily. This is done to build individual plans, with corrective actions so the participants can succeed. Participants are able to build personal relationships with managers which helps the newcomers feel they are part of the team.
We don’t have hundreds of candidates in Remote Camp at any one time; the most we would have is 40 to 50. Having this number allows managers to know everyone by name and to build personal relationships.
There are several types of Remote Camp for:
· Managers
· Engineering
· Customer Support
· CTO
The majority are for Engineering.
The Remote Camp training is designed to determine which applicants are truly committed to our processes. When applicants hear about Crossover opportunities, they are often attracted by the salaries. We believe that our quality approach to recruiting is much more exacting than that of other companies.
Benefits of Remote Camp
The people who graduate from Remote Camp are fully trained on Crossover’s platform, processes, and playbooks. They will learn our proprietary training methodology, such as how to use Worksmart, our productivity tool. We also train them in team management and working in a super fast-paced environment.
When they graduate from Remote Camp, they can add immediate value to their team. Some managers report that after Remote Camp, new graduates are even more successful than their peers who have been working at Crossover longer. They have increased their skills and with practice in real-world scenarios, are confident of the challenges ahead. They are rewarded for their determination and perseverance in passing Remote Camp.
Feedback from Participants
Candidates who have gone through Crossover’s Remote Camp talk about its challenges and rewards.
Davidson Alunan, an L1 Customer Support Engineer, said, “The Remote Camps goals are super-aggressive. But I’ve learned a ton and it’s the most rewarding environment ever.”
“Remote Camp was the most challenging experience I’ve ever had,” said Ivan Marin, an L1 Customer Support Engineer. “Within one month, I expanded my skills like crazy, gained a group of friends and colleagues from all over the world, and feel ready to jump into my new team.”
Other participants are proud of the progress that has enabled them to take on critical responsibilities at Crossover.
Pallavi Pandey, a QA Manual Tester, said, “I’ve never seen an onboarding process as well thought-out as Remote Camp. At the end of it, I feel ready to add immediate value. My peers have been coaches to me, and I’m already owning some of Crossover’s most important projects.”
Results of Remote Camp
Crossover has found that since the company has raised its bar for testing of participants that the overall quality of the firm’s workers has increased dramatically.
The people Crossover hires are the best in the industry. Here is some feedback from clients who have hired graduates of Remote Camp:
“I have hired over 100 people over the years from Crossover,” said Mayank Gupta, Software Engineering Manager at Ignite, in the Handcrafted Unit Testing Team. “The best software engineer that I ever hired was one of the recent graduates of Remote Camp. He works in my unit. We have clear productivity and FTAR (First Time Acceptance Rate) expectations on this team. He has been meeting standards consistently. He typically stays at the top of Staff for Stars ranking, both in productivity and FTAR.”
Gupta added, “Remote Camp graduates consistently add value to my team because they are aligned with our processes and expectations.”
Deniz Yavas, a Software Engineering Manager in Engineering Core at Crossover, says, “I have three Remote Camp graduates on my team. With quality focus and an innovative mindset, they are always one step ahead of the others. They are more committed to our aggressive targets and are consistently pushing the team towards greater success.”
Both the general media and the technical world press agree that the global demand for software engineers is going to continue to grow. Right now, the demand exceeds the supply. If you are considering a career in technology, then you would be well served to become a software engineer and apply to Crossover’s Remote Camp.
It looks like your future will be limitless!
Credits: Kathleen McKay
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