In August 2010 I wrote about the start of a new rotational program within my R&D organization. Ten new employees were hired for 3 nine-month shifts across a variety of engineering positions. Half of these ten report to me (on paper), while receiving their daily instructions from a rotational manager.
Two of the more interesting aspects of the program are certification and innovation.
Certification
All ten employees spent their first week in Franklin, MA, taking the ISM course. This course gave them a high-level view of a variety of technologies: RAID, caching, NAS, replication, storage networking, storage management, etc. All ten took (and passed) the certification exam. They started their careers as EMC Proven Professionals. This is not the norm for the majority of EMC engineers. Certification is often leveraged by customers to increase their knowledge of the technologies that they are using in their labs.
In this case certification was used to gain knowledge for the purpose of building new products for customers. Once certified, the team spread out into a variety of different product groups, including Unisphere, Celerra, Viper, CLARiiON, Replication Manager, etc. The experience that they are gaining in their product teams is deepening a certain aspect of their ISM certification. In 2011 each one of them will be responsible for sharing the details of their assignment with each other.
Intentional Innovation
Another aspect of the program is that the team has the joint responsibility to propose a new product (and perhaps prototype and/or start building it) during their 27-month rotation. This assignment is unrelated to their “day job” and as such they have to find the right balance between divisional goals and pursuing their own ideas. Here is the progress to date:
- All ten attended EMC’s Innovation Showcase in October. As new employees they were able to hear firsthand how other people within EMC propose and advance their ideas.
- They’ve been analyzing the digital preservation market by reading up on some of the more important standards, and they’ve been giving presentations on their findings.
- We’ve spoken to our sales teams in Europe to get a feel for what customers are asking for when it comes to digital preservation.
- We’re planning a 2011 visit to a customer with a big digital archive.
The certification and innovation training aspects are working well, and the program will be repeated again next summer when ten new hires will join the next rotational program (at our MA and NC locations). In fact, interviews (and offers) have started going out to several candidates that heard about the program and contacted the HR department.
In future posts I can describe other aspects of the program, including an emphasis on soft skills and intentional 1×1 networking with various personalities within the company (EMCers: drop me a line if you’re interested in hosting a discussion with a rotational employee).
Steve
Twitter: @SteveTodd
