By Mary Schofield
Virtual Experience is not a new concept for Fidelity, but, using it as a part of the onboarding experience is. On January 25th, we welcomed 125 new Leap associates and 24 associates into the FidelityMADE program. Leap is our technology development program where we provide accelerated tech, business, and professional training to recently hired computer science grads in order to prepare them for their full-time roles. In our January class, we have 108 Leap hires in the US and 15 Leap hires in Ireland.
FidelityMADE is an internal talent development program that provides career mobility opportunities for Fidelity associates. The program is designed to upskill and reskill non-technical associates from the business to start an exciting new career focused in technology.
Each of the 150 associates received a pair of virtual reality goggles in the mail and after a brief tutorial, together, they entered into the Virtual Reality platform. In this room they were told to just explore. Learn how to walk, turn, teleport and even pick-up items and carry them across the room. As an observer, I watched participants smile, laugh, stand-up and engage in their virtual settings, physically move their arms as the operate the controllers as their navigating their space.
As their training continues over the next several weeks associates will participate in scavenger hunts and team building exercises. They will also be the first class to use a new learning platform that will deliver our entire tech curriculum in a collaborative way that allows us to transform remote learning with speed while encouraging connection and networking amongst peers.
David, a new associate, experienced the VR unboxing and shared his thoughts: “It’s so much more immersive than you let yourself admit. The ability to interact by moving your head and arms quickly, tricks your mind to lead you to believe you’re somewhere completely other-worldy. VR is different in how one can nonverbally communicate with their peers. I found some people apparently have a sense of humor based on how they interacted in the virtual world, like spawning and resizing various objects. VR lets you “look” at one another quite differently than video conferences do.
David continued to share his enthusiasm about what he looks forward to, “being surrounded by like-minded, helping, and willing people.” He believes this will contribute to a better experience and is also noticing better comradery. “In previous group situations, we might have found ourselves bearing a bit more of the workload than equal. So far, my peers and technical coaches have shown bouts of going above and beyond to help one another with any issues they’re having.”
Andrew, who also participated commented that “it was a refreshing change to one of our regular zoom calls. The VR headset allowed us to communicate in game with users nearby, and this provided us with the opportunity to get to know new associates in a more fun and relaxed environment.”
We’d like to extend a warm welcome to David & Andrew who both joined our 2021 Leap class. In just a couple months, they will join over 2400+ technologists who completed the Leap program before starting full-time roles at Fidelity. We also wish the best of luck to our associates entering the FidelityMADE program. 2021 marks our 5th year anniversary of offering this to associates interested in pursuing a career in technology.
