Growing as a Technical Resource at Collective Insights
Looking for your first post-graduate job can be a daunting task – and with the current societal climate, this decision can have lasting repercussions if not handled with care. Industry veterans support that the wrong working environment can severely hinder a young professional’s growth, while the right environment will encourage it. Therefore, it is critical to examine the full picture when considering a prospective opportunity.
Beyond simple salary and benefit discussions, gauging an organization’s culture and how they nurture potential is important. A company that encourages its employees to continually improve themselves is more likely to continually strengthen its own overall capabilities and service offerings for clients and partners. Our combined success is incumbent upon growth – both as individuals and as a unified team.
The Working Environment at Collective Insights
Stepping into any new position can be intimidating. However, at Collective Insights, we strive to make this transition as smooth as possible. We understand that onboarding can be challenging and learning new systems and technologies can be overwhelming. We do our best to guide our newest team members through this stressful period so that they feel supported every step of the way.
For us, it’s important to foster an environment where employees can reach their full potential. We encourage our employees to further their own technical skillsets, as well as soft skills that can be just as impactful. We support self-evaluation and peer feedback to help our team members succeed at any project or effort in which they are involved. Our collaborative, team-based approach fosters personal growth – and yields a better product for our clients, too.
Utilizing Our Resources
Collective Insights provides various resources and experiences that are shared between all members. We have built multiple virtual labs, allowing our team members to easily learn and test out new features safely without impacting other efforts. With these labs, we can rapidly train an individual or team on a new feature or service. These labs also allow us to efficiently tailor a specific solution for a client and validate architecture designs and implementation plans.
Through our partnership with Microsoft, we have access to the latest and most advanced releases in their product stack. We often encounter bleeding-edge scenarios that require working directly with the vendor to develop new solutions to newly encountered problems. To provide maximum visibility into forthcoming capabilities prior to public release, we frequently assist our clients with evaluating features and services in a preview or beta stage.
The Importance of Training
By heavily investing in the training needs of our technical resources, we are building the individual employee as well as the team, enabling us to continually provide the highest-quality deliverables to our clients. We tailor the training path to the individual team member, focusing on their existing skillsets, professional areas of expertise, and desire for professional growth in the targeted area. Utilizing different techniques allows us the flexibility of molding our training pipeline to the individual. In partnership with Microsoft and other organizations, we provide the resources necessary for our technical team members to attain certifications that validate their knowledge and experience.
Nurturing Via Mentorship
Our mentorship program is a key component to fostering personal and professional growth at Collective Insights. New team members are paired with a senior technical resource to shadow and learn from directly. The mentor can pass along their knowledge and experience, while the mentee can provide a fresh perspective that broadens our collective capabilities.
Not only does this help integrate a new employee into the team, but these professional relationships can also have a lasting impact far beyond a transitional period. We pride ourselves in our open and welcoming environment and encourage our team members to grow and, one day, be able to mentor and pass along knowledge and lessons learned to others.
Knowledge Through Exposure
At Collective Insights, we provide solutions for a variety of platforms and services and are continually engaged with clients running complex and heterogeneous environments. This activity exposes our personnel to numerous scenarios and organizations in several different sectors. Each organization provides its own unique experiences and challenges, and different projects within an organization can focus on varying technical aspects.
With exposure to many organizational models and various technology efforts, our team members can leverage the best practices for many different fields – and ensure the work we provide is of the utmost quality.
