Operation Lighting Bolt- Internship Program
By: Renata Aguilar
A year ago, I was given a new mission: Guide the new Yuxi lads towards their full potential and at the same time, provide opportunities for both parties. Yet, the mission was more than just guiding a group of young and talented individuals towards new goals, it was also about creating tactical strategies for pre-selection process of the lucky ones, planning assessments either for technical and soft skills to help with the final selection; establishing ongoing evaluations and plans for growth in the company (mentorships and lessons learned), and at the same time molding the new talent into prospective Yuxians. That’s how it began, implementing multiple strategies, several plans and continuous evaluations in which I took ownership of the new mission appointment.
CodeJams sensations: The first two CodeJams in the Yuxi history took place in the city of the Eternal Spring time which is Medellin, and the other in the coffee plantations region which is Armenia. My team and I created the strategy to start with the challenge, where two assessments were created with an easy/medium complexity, a prior subscription so as to start the challenge (a questionnaire where we wanted to find out further about the person and their accomplishments). Based on the question forum, we obtained a couple hundred individuals interested in both areas, so eager to participate in this opportunity by being part of this new initiative proposed by Yuxi Global, yet the majority of them wanted to acquire this new experience.
Let the games begin! As each subscribed individual entered the auditorium, there was the nervous sensation of knowing the competition followed by mean game faces ready to take what was coming on their way. Challengers seated and were explained on the rules of the game; 4 hours to complete the test, 2 technical assessments to apply logic and best practices. Tick tock, time was running and the pressure kicked in, heads were turning aside, nodding, checking the clock and going through devastating cold sweat feeling.
After completing the CodeJams, all the registered individuals had to submit their executed assessments with the hopes on passing to the next level. For the players, it was more like applying the phrase “patience is a virtue” while anxiously expecting an answer whether good or bad from Yuxi Global-” Thanks for trying! Or Congratulations, you made it to the next level!”
Pre-selection process: Once we obtained the results, we reviewed each individual’s answers and technical assessments to the core. Not only we did evaluate the logic of their assessment execution but the best practices in their code and the time it took them to answer each particular assessment. Not to mention the variety of short stories that took us by surprise, based on their replied questions from the questionnaire form. We really wanted to be objective, fair and responsible for making the most adequate selections and not just simply contemplating our final decisions with a final score. This phase of the operation was by far the most tactical one because the importance of selecting the chosen ones would imply a long term investment for the company and also by being careful and efficient enough on the processes which were the key objectives.
The chopping block: Once the pre-selection phase was completed, we proceeded to perform face to face interviews with the players that had one life left in the game. Our objective with these interviews were simple: meeting the players and really getting to know them in a more personal level. Based on those face to face interviews, we were able to obtain an interesting personal approach at a high level (personality traits, wantings, needs, goals/dreams and most important their live stories). Considering the personal approach which was our secret weapon to gather our last data to select the chosen few and adopt them into the Yuxi family.
Lucky #14: The magic number for the chosen few was 14, fresh new faces, full of hope, desire to learn and show what they are made of and their eagerness to start on this new journey. These 14 rookies were now part of the Yuxi family and adapted the company’s values as their own: Passion, Responsibility and Honesty.
Showing what they are made of: Another important phase of the operation was to innovate the trainings forms, how they were going to be done, executed, managed, graded and learned by those trainings methods. We took a new way of doing things by establishing Bootcamps in .Net and Angular framework, which provided us efficiency, convenience and practical developments. The fundaments of these two components were to teach and establish a guide for the new family members who took part in within this process. Once those Bootcamps were completed, we realized that it was important to have some mentorship the better to shadow along the new flesh in order to mature their technical skills in these areas. For this, we took 4 of our big guns from Yuxi which are some of the most experienced technical guys we have, to make partnership with the new guys with this new learning curve and at the same time, execute project assignments for the company. In this case, we were doing a trial- error assessment, where we learnt a lot from our mistakes at an early stage, and thus applying adjustments to improve the skills needed.
To sum up, all the targeted plans and their documentation, have had ups and downs throughout the process, nevertheless together as a family with passion, responsibility and honesty were able to stand tall and complete the mission the best way we could with some battle wound scars.
