Dave joined us at Hutch in May as a Senior Marketing Artist – but with our office still closed due to Covid-19, we hired him via online interviews and we’re yet to meet him in person! Here’s Dave on what it’s like to change jobs during a pandemic…

The day before my interview at Hutch, the country-wide lockdown was announced and it had to be re-organised as an online version. And ever since then, the whole process from interview, through onboarding and doing my job day-to-day has been done remotely. Looking back after almost two months at Hutch, here’s what helped me feel a part of the team, despite being far apart.

Buddying Up

Being assigned a buddy to field all my noob questions has made getting up to speed with our games and processes a whole lot easier. Everyone on my team has been really supportive and made me feel welcome, organising things like virtual team lunches to help me get to know everyone better in the absence of real-world interactions.

Company Culture

From the initial communications after accepting the job, to the first call on day one, everyone I’ve interacted with has been so helpful, friendly and welcoming. It didn’t take long for me to feel at home and settled despite all the external circumstances. Even on my first day I got a sense of the open and supportive culture at Hutch which has helped me feel part of the company, despite having never met the team.

Patience

Although most things have been pretty smooth, there are things that are out of anyone’s control due to the global nature of what’s happening, so it’s important to have patience with things like getting hardware setup and access to accounts. It’s also important to have patience with yourself. Leaving one job and starting another at exactly the same desk within a week led to some frustrations. Sometimes it left me feeling that I should be fully up to speed with things when I didn’t know all the new people, processes and filing systems etc. Which leads to…

Home Work Setup

I found it really helpful to have a bit of a desk re-organisation to bring it home that I’m in a new job at a new company. Nothing major, just some little differences like a new unicorn desk buddy, clearing out some clutter and swapping around monitors, but it helped recreate that new office vibe at home.

Everyone will be experiencing the current weirdness differently, but these are things that helped me turn what was a situation full of trepidation, into one of the least stressful onboarding experiences I’ve had!

I can’t wait to meet everyone at Hutch in the fabulous third dimension once it’s safe to do so!