New Hire Input Form: Fill & Download for Free

No harder than any other job. You need some qualifications (try googling HR association in [your country]) and ideally some sort of rationale if you don’t have any experience. Most people are first hired as recruiters, to help the organization find, interview and hire new people for other jobs. They then begin to trouble-shoot the new hires when there are problems (this is called “employee relations” and forms the bulk of the more challenging HR work). They also do lots of admin tasks - often payroll input, benefits sign ups, health and safety, training, and more. Any of these can be entry points, so if you’ve worked in other jobs perhaps you’ve had first aid training and can argue that a next step would be to work with the health and safety parts of HR. Once you get into the area, you can learn more and move to other roles.

Disclaimer: I work as a Product Manager on a forms automation product.Many HRMS products have onboarding form automation built-in, as referenced in the article. Some of these allow for a streamlined process, but not all of them excel in this capability.Many of our customers have used our software to streamline the onboarding process by packaging forms for distribution to new hires. The software is able to smartly autofill the forms based on a single input from the user. They only type their name, address, etc. one time. Form output can be pushed to other systems, such as HRMS, ERP or LMS systems to automate the process for administrators. More information on our blog: Automate Employee Onboarding with Forms InMotion.

In my personal opinion, E5 at Facebook because it has the healthiest engineering culture, you’ll have the most freedom to work on what you want, and that latitude removes barriers to producing high-impact which is rewarded financially. I base that on working at Facebook, working at Amazon as a SDE3 (L6) in three groups 2006-2007, and comparing notes with software engineering friends at Google.New Facebook engineers select their groups. Although higher level employees are recruited for specific slots, they’re still free to choose a different group during the six week bootcamp. Boot campers work for groups that interest them, sit with the teams, and can try out different positions. Amazon hires senior engineers for specific positions. Google’s matching process lacks the try-before-you-buy aspect and offers less choice to new hires.If you want something different later, you can do a hackamonth elsewhere after which you can stay with the new team or return to your previous position. Lateral movement in both directions between engineering and management is possible.Facebook engineers work on what they want how they want. If you see something your group should be doing, you can make it your main focus or form an adhoc team during a hackathon. Other engineers will help if you convince them it’s the right thing for the product and them personally.This is independent of title and level. All Facebook engineers share the same “Software Engineer” title. Engineering levels are secret. While you can figure out positions through projects and reporting structure, they have no bearing on interactions with peers.Engineers are kept aligned through natural consequences and semiannual reviews. Bad process and poor quality will lead to on-call pain for you and your coworkers. Colleagues will choose to work on things other than your projects if you’re not a team player or do not deliver impactful work in a timely manner. In reviews results are measured and peer input considered to determine promotions, stock refresh grant size, and cash bonus. Rewards won’t follow if you choose projects which aren’t impactful or do not contribute to improving your team and its products.Amazon and Google are more top down. When an Amazon manager wants to do scrum, you’ll do that and work on items in the burn-down list. Amazon reorganizes according to its strategic and tactical needs.Every Facebook engineer from new graduate to secret princial engineer goes through bootcamp where they learn the tools, ship code for a variety of groups, and pickup culture/process. Everyone writes automated tests and gets code reviews. There’s an effort to improve engineering process. Facebook treats its engineers like adults and doesn’t tell them what to do, although bad decisions produce operational pain. Each Amazon group has its own process. Google has more uniform quality than Amazon, but less focus on the on-boarding process.Facebook teams comprised of software engineers and production engineers run their own services. When I was there, Amazon engineers ran their own services. Google software engineers build services and Site Reliability Engineers run them. Facebook’s organization has the best balance, with engineers personally feeling the impact of what they do feeding back to create better quality, but with teammates that have more operational background helping avoid pitfalls.Financially, engineers are more likely to do well at Facebook where they can identify and pursue high impact projects yielding promotions, cash, and stock.While generally Google L4 compensation would be lower than Google L5 and the comparable Facebook E5 level, that shouldn’t be an issue because they have latitude to go out of band on pay when there are competing offers.I’d be inclined to avoid the Google L4 offer because of likely project availability. Open position leveling is often based on required scope, and as someone who can handle 6+ month projects as a senior software engineer you’ll be less happy when that’s limited to multi-week features.L6 at Amazon confers no advantages, with L6 SDE3 comparable to Google L5 Senior Software Engineer and Facebook E5.Usually I suggest choosing based on who you’ll learn from, what you’ll do, and the career opportunities. I don’t in this case because at Facebook you’ll have latitude to reach out beyond your group, can choose an area suiting your talents, can pursue projects that interest you, and can create your own opportunities.Regardless of choosing Amazon, Facebook, or Google you’ll work with great people. You’ll be well compensated. If what you’re looking for changes you can move to either of the other companies.I don’t speak for my employer.