My company provides mandatory training for all new employees. As soon as I joined the company, I got busy on my project. I was able to delay the mandatory training. However last week it caught up with me. Human Resources informed me that I must attend this training. So I reported to the training facility. It is only 40 miles away from my house. However due to city traffic gridlock, I had to leave very early for there to be any chance of arriving on time.The company provides breakfast and lunch. This is to make sure you eat and get back to training quickly. The food is ok. We learned about the history of the firm. I got a nice coffee table book describing the company over the years. The training was geared around how we market ourselves as a company to clients.
There were some funny harassment videos. I saw my vice president being interviewed in another video clip. It seemed that the table I sat at lost all the competitions with other new employees. So I walked out of the 2 day training class without any SWAG. There were a lot of retired military new hires in my firm. I also met some new people that work in the same building that I do.
I ran into an interesting fellow developer at the training session. He was in another class, but I spoke with him during one of our networking sessions. He is currently doing Linux and C development. However he was positioning himself to get into Microsoft Sharepoint development. This guy seemed to have a very broad background. This is in sharp contrast with my own specialization in one or two technical areas and one particular client. I did notice that this guy was a level below me in the organization.
Even though I have been with the company for almost half a year, I never got any business cards. This was a real disadvantage at the training. An important component of our company is making contacts through networking. I felt a little funny having to jot down my contact info on blank pieces of paper to hand out. I was impressed that most of the new hires seemed like top notch people. Perhaps this is because we are a management consulting company. And that draws a certain kind of individual to the firm.
