TravelPerk

How TravelPerk Increases Productivity of New Engineers with Zero Turbulence

For thousands of professionals, TravelPerk takes the hassle out of business travel. This Barcelona-based company streamlines booking, managing, and getting reimbursed for flights, hotels, and more.

Thanks to VP of Engineering Ivan Peralta’s engineering team, TravelPerk is a game-changer when it comes to these everyday travel tasks. What makes them so special? According to Ivan, it’s his hiring philosophy.

Challenge: Create a customized and scalable onboarding experience for engineers

TravelPerk’s tech stack is “very particular,” according to Ivan. Very few companies use the exact combination of Jungle, Python, and React. “Because our tech stack is so unique, we don’t consider it a constraint when hiring new engineers,” he says. “Instead, we look for people who are open to developing as full-stack or generalist engineers.”

While Ivan’s hiring philosophy offers them a lot of flexibility during the hiring process, it also means new hires need to learn the ropes quickly. “Our success is very dependent on a robust onboarding process,” he says. New hires spend their first few weeks learning new technology before becoming fully contributing members of the team.

But as the team was about to double in size, Ivan worried that his hiring and onboarding philosophy wouldn’t scale. So he began looking for a partner to support his rapidly growing team’s training.

Solution: Design a custom technical onboarding syllabus

Ivan found an ideal partner in Udemy Business thanks to its technical content. And when he presented the proposal to leadership, Udemy’s library of courses played a critical role in their approval. “We’re an engineering company,” he says, “So it was critical for them that the content was also high-quality and updated regularly — which Udemy is known for.”

Optimize onboarding

Ivan’s top priority was designing a comprehensive onboarding program for new hires. He knew they had the growth mindset and other qualities that would help them succeed on his team — they just needed to build their technical foundations.

Ivan used Learning Paths to create a custom syllabus for new hires so they could learn all the coding languages used in TravelPerk’s tech stack. He found relevant Udemy courses for each coding language – Python, Jungle, and React. During their first two weeks at the company, new engineers took these Udemy courses to build their knowledge. Engineers would learn all the specifics of how the languages are used at TravelPerk later, once they joined their squads.

And talk about a successful launch! Ivan estimates about 10% of the engineers had a background in Python and Jungle. But at the end of onboarding, every single engineer was able to contribute 100% when they joined their squad.