First steps to lasting impressions: A newcomer’s journey with Exness

New beginnings can be exciting but tough. There’s always a lot to take in, whether you’re learning a new language, starting a new job, or moving to a new country with a completely different social environment. Imagine all of these things happening at once, and you have the average experience of a fresh hire at Exness during the company’s recent growth.

An Exnessian starting journey is ripe with both opportunities and challenges of joining a new company – especially within an industry as fast-paced as trading. While these challenges come naturally, Exness makes sure that no one has to face them alone, with helping hands always reaching out to alleviate the pressure of being a new employee.

One pair of such helping hands belongs to Violetta Krianeva, our Learning & Development Manager who was involved in creating a smooth, painless, and informative onboarding process at the company. We asked Violetta how Exness handled welcoming newcomers during the period of rapid headcount growth, and followed her on a virtual journey of a fresh hire.

A universal welcome

When looking for new professionals to hire, companies often focus on the hunting process above all else. It makes sense, as you have to ‘catch’ the candidate before your competitors do, bring them in, and handle their further development. The onboarding itself, while not ignored completely, often gets overshadowed by other processes, leaving the newbies with a lot to figure out on their own.

With the magnitude of growth that Exness had gone through a few years back, this approach would have only led to hundreds of people walking around confused about how things work, stressing about their lack of company knowledge, and spending precious time on figuring things out – time that could be spent better elsewhere.

Although Exness never had the habit of leaving new hires in the dark, the exact steps and procedures varied between different offices, departments, and even teams. This prompted the creation of the Global Induction Team which I’m proud to be a part of. We were tasked with paying full attention to each individual joining the company: no easy feat if you consider some of our ‘Welcome days’ featured up to 60 people, all with their unique situations, questions, and inquiries. Creating a smooth onboarding process for everyone is a challenge, as you can’t simply offload an encyclopedia’s worth of new information onto people and expect to have an adequately informed workforce on day one.

We took inventory of our existing procedures, approximated the amount of company knowledge a newcomer needs to obtain for comfortable work, and started building the optimal Exness onboarding experience.

Early birds get the memo

As a newcomer, your onboarding formally begins as soon as you receive a job offer from Exness. We will stay in touch with you, answer your questions, and provide the necessary information – gradually, so as not to overwhelm you. Accepting the offer is just the first step.

Are you prepared to join ASAP, in a few weeks, maybe a month? We will reach an agreement and accommodate your situation. Are you relocating from another country? We will provide a list of documents necessary from your side, and start preparing ours in advance. Your future manager will also be informed about your agreed-upon starting date, as we firmly believe that the sooner you reach out to a new employee, the more welcomed, encouraged, and acknowledged it makes them feel.

These courtesies go hand-in-hand with technicalities: the IT team will prepare your hardware in advance, and send you a simple manual for setting up your corporate Exness email account remotely so that you can become an official part of our digital ecosystem even before you’ve set foot in an Exness office. This not only helps avoid a long setup process after your arrival, but also provides you with the opportunity to explore some of our internal resources at your own pace. While most of them will remain off-limits to you until you’ve officially started with the company, a special ‘onboarding page’ from our intranet will be available to you the moment you sign the job offer.

It’s all about finding and maintaining the subtle balance between the quantity and the accessibility of information, which there is quite a lot of. So we start early and allow you to get your feet wet before your new job responsibilities start encroaching on your valuable time.

The many first impressions

You are not alone.

More than just words of encouragement, it’s a fact that becomes evident the moment you join the Newcomers channel in Slack, our official internal communications platform. The names you will see there belong to people who have also been recently hired and are likely a bit confused just like you. This channel will be your first digital Exness home for the following 3 months, where no question is left unanswered, and where a small but tight community is born.

In a few weeks you will get to e-meet these people during our Welcome Day: an extensive video conference with a fresh batch of newcomers from all over the world. Here you will get to introduce yourself, meet others, and experience the diverse international community of Exness for the first time. The acquaintance process is followed by only the most important information: company culture and principles, the people and departments you need to know, our main tools and systems, corporate benefits, and the further steps of your onboarding.

A more individual welcome from your manager is soon to follow, and you might even meet your future team. But don’t rush headfirst into your new work just yet – there will be plenty of that in the nearest future. Now is the time for recalling your student days, if only temporarily.

Know your industry

Few employers will have you skip out on work during your first official day on the job – let alone your first week. Exness is one such employer though: for five days you will go through the standard ‘Industry Training’: getting acquainted with our business, our products, our internal ethics, and how it all works together in the relentless trading industry. None of this is trivial: we’re hiring professionals from beyond the trading industry, and want those unfamiliar with it to have at least a basic grasp of the business and what we do differently from our competitors. Ethics is much more than a buzzword here, as doing things openly and honestly while maintaining profitability, fuelling innovation and keeping clients happy is a combination that can only be achieved when everyone is on board with our mindset.

If you’ve been hired for a client-facing position, your training will be much longer, more intensive, and meticulous. Involving both theory and practice, this training will have you communicating with real clients under supervision, with KPIs to meet and evaluations to pass. It’s an intense month-long process that can be extended if necessary, but one that ensures that our clients communicate with the most qualified Exnessians out there, and gives you the well-deserved pride of being one.

Everybody needs a Buddy

With the training out of the way and the newly-found confidence in your knowledge, your probation begins. By this time, your probation goals have already been prepared by your manager, but you are free to further discuss and even modify them – provided both of you reach an agreement on the expectations. Helping keep your eyes on the prize is our probation period goals tracker: a system that allows all involved parties to understand, clarify, manage, and check the completion of agreed-upon goals.

Speaking of involved parties, your manager, HR partner, and teammates are not the only people you can rely upon. We know that everyone needs a friend at work. Someone who will talk to you not just about your tasks and responsibilities, but assist in getting the ins and outs of the office life. When can you come in? Which offices are available? Where to grab a bite during lunch break? How to adjust climate control? Where’s the coffee machine and which buttons make a tasty invigorating beverage come out? How to keep your head above water in the vortex of new information? All of this and other ways to assist your smooth integration become the duty of your Exness Buddy.

What does a Buddy do? It’s in the name. This role encompasses the meaning of a helping hand without the overbearing formality of terms like ‘Assistant’ or ‘Companion’. This is why your manager can never be your Buddy, although we’ve had quite a few managers volunteering for the role to help their new subordinates. A Buddy is an experienced Exnessian whom you can rely on without the pressure of accountability for any work-related tasks.

The perks of this system go both ways. Becoming a Buddy is an opportunity to make friends, relay company values in a casual manner, and even develop leadership skills that benefit career growth. So once you’re done with your probation and feel comfortable in the company – consider becoming a Buddy as well! It’s a joy and a privilege.

Once a newcomer, always a learner

Although your formal ‘newcomer’ status is likely to last no longer than 3 months, there will always be something new for you to learn and discover. Exness leadership hosts webinars on company culture, vision, and mission, making sure that our values are aligned and answering questions from employees regularly.

If you’re relocating from a different country, our migration specialists will be available for assistance during every step of this complicated and inevitably stressful process to make it as easy on you as possible: from providing a temporary residence before you find your own, to sharing crucial tips about the local real estate market, medicine, education, social and child services, benefits, traffic laws, and family-related inquiries among others.

Most Exness employees have gone through the migration process at some point, and are always happy to provide advice and assistance to colleagues on the matter. I still remember my own experience relocating: it took over six months to finally feel at home with the new social and professional environment. But this only armed me with the knowledge of all the things that can be improved to make a newcomer’s experience smoother, less stressful, and more exciting. Just like everything else in Exness, it’s a never-ending journey of improvement, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with every fresh hire.

Maybe you’re the one who gets to experience this journey with us next!