Fostering Talents: March 2019 Agile Meet-up
Employee Journals“We encourage our staff to discover their potentials and go the extra mile with us. Challenge is what keeps us going and quenches our thirst for growth.”
Working as a Business Analyst under the Product Division of RareJob Philippines, I want to share with you guys a brief overview of what life is with RareJob. If you were able to read what’s written at our website’s homepage, you’ll see that the company encourages its employees to not just reach their full potential but to even surpass it.
It’s a pretty standard thing that companies say, but when I started in RareJob, I really felt that the company stays true to its words.
Back then, I wanted to attend trainings or have certifications to advance my career but, of course, I wasn’t eligible for those kinds of benefits yet as I had just started my employment in the company. However, our manager did not let that stop us and encouraged us to attend seminars, trainings, or meet-ups that would help enhance our current skillsets used in work. My teammate and I started looking for meet-ups around the city, and that’s how we found out about Agile Philippines. Agile Philippines is a Filipino community in pursuit of software engineering excellence by following the principles of Agile Software Development. We attended our first meet-up, which was held at BGC.
To sum up what happens in each meet-up, there would be a host company providing the venue, food, and drinks (yes, food and drinks are free for everyone who will join!). Then, there would be an activity called Open-Space; basically the attendees would think of the topics within the umbrella of Agile, coding, or anything tech-related, and put them on the board. Then, everyone would pick which topic they want to join in. This is a picture of the topic board we had:
Every time we would go to an event, we would share the next day everything that we learned, realized, or experienced while we were there. It became a regular thing we do every month. After a few meet-ups, our manager had an idea: why not host an Agile meet-up in RareJob? We have the space, plus, this can be both a good exposure and experience for our division. So we contacted Ealden, who arranges the monthly meet-ups, to ask if RareJob can be the next meet-up host. With the help of the HR and the Admin Department, RareJob was able to successfully host a meet-up for the month of March. The HR Department helped us in managing guests coming into the office from different companies, while the Admin department helped in setting up the venue. Everyone was very supportive. They were really helping us just to make sure that our guests have a good experience while they were at RareJob. Here are some of the photos during the event:
After the event, I talked to my colleagues and they said that they really enjoyed the event. They also shared to me their learnings and realizations from the meet-up. Some of them became more motivated to hone their skills in their craft and to push their limits.
