First Job experience at Foody - That is a lot to take in

First experience job-wise happening at Foody during Millennial generation. That is a lot to take in.

It is I, Katerina, one of the newbies at Foody and I am taking this opportunity to write my first blog to express my gratitude and excitement entering this new chapter of my life at Foody!

In this blog post, I’ll be sharing my experience along with random events that happened during my first 2 weeks at Foody.

First let me introduce myself (awkward).

So you guessed right, my name is Katerina, and I’m 23 years old (so young and so old). I finished my postgrad assignments and dissertation as Human Resource Management in September (absolutely loved it) and I will hopefully graduate in January (yeiii).

Oh yes, I studied in the UK for 4 years, I did both my undergrad and postgrad in Leicester but at a different university. My undergrad was in Sociology at the University of Leicester and my postgrad was at De Montfort University.

After creating a very small mental image of who I am, I will proceed on the purpose of this piece of writing.

First I will discuss how the first week – the induction week – went by so smoothly and then I will proceed in discussing how the second week went by all so smoothly but full of excitement and adrenaline.

Week One

The first week was all about setting up on the system, getting used to the software and in general adjusting to the new environment.

What made the week run smoother was the fact that on my arrival day – 3rd September 2018 – there was another newcomer, which made me feel more at ease.

Due to the fact that the other newcomer – Sophia – and I were going roughly through the same thing emotionally, but also literally going through the same thing practically – setting up on the PC and being trained, it helped us bond.

From day one, I felt even more welcomed at Foody with the aid of Sophia.

Obviously that is not Sophia nor me. But a decent picture demonstrating the bondness between two human beings.

Leaving the cheesiness behind, the first two days were honestly a bit overwhelming as I was trying to wrap my head around all the software and figuring out what the purpose of each one is and how to communicate through each software.

This is where the famous line “see the help file” would always come in from any team member.

What is a help file? Help file, now called a wiki file, is a file where anything a team member may need, even on how to use the coffee machine will have a help file, helping the team member familiarise himself with how to use the coffee machine.

With help files, not only you have everything you need written down, but you have the chance to write your own help file that you believe will help and benefit another team member. It is all about learning, developing and supporting here. 🙂

So that’s what we were – and still – doing, reading the help files, which are indeed very helpful (shocking I know).

The third day, Sophia went to her group – the developers side – and I “officially” joined the business side.

What I mean by this is that Foody is divided into two main groups let’s say: Business side and Product side. So the Product side takes care of the technical and design part of Foody, and Business side takes care of the business side of things such as marketing, sales, customer support.

But in the end, we are one big group, helping, supporting and developing one another.

It was not a goodbye though, it was a ‘see you soon’ with Sophia.

From day three I got deep into work and the system. I was assigned to take over three restaurants and make their menu from square one, and make phone calls with the restaurants so all three could go live – meaning be accessible for customers to order from the restaurants.

Humanly, I just loved that I was contributing. Making mistakes but with the unlimited support I was receiving I was still feeling I was contributing even through my mistakes and my annoyingness (I wouldn’t call it annoying, I would call it sweetness).

Most importantly, it helped to get to know the rest of the crew 🙂

So as you may have interpreted through this brief summary of my first week, it was basically giving us time to adjust and learn how things operate independently, but with help if needed. And then dive into work, which honestly this helped me learn faster the way software works and why.

P.S: On the first day, Sophia and I, were waiting to be dismissed at the end of our work day. True story.

Week Two

The second week arrived, and the responsibility given to me grew, but Ι could not have been more excited about it. The responsibility was me practicing my Human Resources skills with a newcomer who arrived the week after my own arrival.

In a nutshell, the induction was given by Argyris, and I was participating in the induction process. Any help the newcomer needed I would provide it to her, (as much as I knew and could of course).

The second week, the newbie – Ioanna – had to adjust like Sophia and I did the previous week. So the third day, I involved her in the creation of menus of the three restaurants I had been assigned to. My training turned into helping each other create the menu.

Apart from that, the second week was full of training in different sections:

Marketing: How to make ads and posts on Facebook
Content Writing: How to construct a press release, how to reply to emails of customers and restaurant owners
Delivery Areas: How to find the delivery areas, and create them
Creating Restaurant Menus: How to create a restaurant menu from scratch
Culture Training: Discuss about the culture of the workplace, and discuss about the future of the workplace

(Also not all five training were in the same day, they were spread throughout the week. Do not worry, this is a humane workplace).

At these training, Sophia and I would meet. As I said it was a ‘see you soon’ situation.

Each training has been been given by different team members. Training gave the opportunity for both the newbies and team members to get to know each other and socialize.

In addition, having a lot of training in one week, gave us a lot of insight and information of how things operate on the business side. So week two made it easier to adjust.

On top of the training, we had several meetings to attend. Someone may argue that this is quite overwhelming but it honestly kept us on our toes.

Second week was a lot to process, but everything we were trained in was put to practice, so in the end everything just made sense. In this company, nothing said or done is by accident. What is said and what is done has a reason behind it.

I’m really content to have been trusted to guide another newcomer while still being a newcomer myself. But the whole team jumped to help the newcomers, which as mentioned, demonstrated the unlimited support surrounding this workplace.

All in all, I’m really enjoying working for this company and I am very excited to see where my Foody adventure will take me!