What is expected of you during pre-boarding
Go through the articles
You will see that there are several "books" in this chapter. One of those is specifically for Learning Advisors hires, the others are for all to read. Make sure you go through all the relevant "books"
Answer the questions
Sometimes, in between the chapters, you will find some quiz-questions and/or open questions. Please answer them :)
Read the readinglist
In order to became a real Springeteer as soon as possible, we ask you to go through our reading list and read the books we recommend (preferably before your first day)
Go through the articles
You will see that there are several "books" in this chapter. One of those is specifically for Learning Advisors hires, the others are for all to read. Make sure you go through all the relevant "books"
Answer the questions
Sometimes, in between the chapters, you will find some quiz-questions and/or open questions. Please answer them :)
Read the readinglist
In order to became a real Springeteer as soon as possible, we ask you to go through our reading list and read the books we recommend (preferably before your first day)
Your first day @ Springest
Working hours
At Springest, with a fulltime 40 hour contract you work 8 hours a day, plus one hour of lunchbreak in between. This means if you start the day at 9.00, you work until 18.00. Of course, you are welcome to start earlier. You will get key, so you can enter and leave the building whenever you like. But for your first day: ring the bell and walk to the third floor.
We always start the day with a stand-up at 09.30. Make sure you are at Springest before 09.30, so you are on time. Some circles (teams) start earlier than others, so make sure you talk to your leadlink in your first week about the times your are expected at the office. On your first day, 09.15 is perfect to get started together.
Stand-up time
- Short check-in: What is on your mind?
- Call out distractions, get present for the meeting. One person speaks at a time, without discussion
- Discuss your agenda:
- DONE: What were the 2/3 most important actions you completed (for your projects yesterday). Keep it short.
- TO DO: What are your most important to-do's for today?
Lunch
We have lunch together at 12.30, but of course you are free to go somewhere else for lunch. The lunch is healthy, as biological and locally produced as possible and FREE :) There is a fiscal addition on your paycheck for lunch, because that is obligatory by law. But there is no deduction of lunch money from your salary.
Dresscode
Start-up life! We won't tell you what to wear when. Dress however you feel awesome, pretty & comfy.
Onboarding-schedule
On your first day, one of the "onboarders" at Springest, will arrange a desk, hardware and other necessities for you and will sit with you to explain what you can expect and how what you need to do to be onboarded. First part of onboarding however, is your pre boarding, which starts here.
Tools
Before you start, you will get an e-mail/text with login information for our tools (Slack, Gmail, Asana, other role related tools), which means you can already start with checking out what we are doing. From the moment you can access Asana and Slack we want to ask you to no use e-mail between colleagues. For example, when giving us your data for salary administration and copies of ID, please make use of Asana and add a link to Google Drive if you share documents. Thats how we roll :) If you have any questions about this, please do ask!!
Springest history, accomplishments & media
It all started in 2008...
The Springest story started in March 2008. Ruben Timmerman (speaker, online marketing expert and owner of his own business since 2004) was frantically looking for a good course. He could however not find a proper place to compare courses, filter on region, budget et cetera or find reviews of other people. Thus, Eduhub was born: a platform where people got connected with everything related to education and
personal growth. The company started out from his house in Utrecht, but Ruben also worked from Switzerland for a while, with 2 developers working remote.
In 2009 the company moved back to the Netherlands and found an office at the Singel in Amsterdam. Now there were four people in total, working together at the office. Growth came fast and the company expanded to around 10 people, when it moved to the current location at Rokin 75 in October 2010.
It turned out that 2010 was a year of more changes; the name Eduhub was replaced by "Springest", envisioning growth, springtime and development. Shortly after that, the company is elected "Start up of the Year" by The Next Web and Ruben received the LOEY starters award.
Two years later, an investment round ensured room for more growth, provided by de Rabobank and our Angel investors, amongst which were Marque Joosten (funda.nl), Patrick Kerssenmakers (fonq.nl) and Floris Rost van Tonningen (hyves.nl). The company expanded to Germany and the UK in 2012.
2013 was the year of the Springest Lustrum, celebrated with a great SpringFest at the office. By this time, around 15 people were working full time at the company. Because of the growth and changes accompanying that, Holacracy was introduced. Coached by Diederick Jansse from Realize!, everyone at the company got trained in this organisational system. The shift to Holacracy was time consuming and not always easy, but productivity increased rapidly.
Half a year later, in December 2014, Ruben closed a deal with Sanoma Ventures for another round of investment. After that, a big investment party at the office followed for our business relations, family and friends. More money, more growth and more challenges were on the agenda now. A lot of learning, chaotic growth and excitement followed the investment. Unfortunately the investment did not lead to the envisioned growth, which led to a period of declining revenue and with that the team became smaller too.
Still, Springest received an award from NRC Beste Werkgever 2014-2015 in the category ‘Nieuwe Helden’, because of our organisational system without managers and the climate of learning for colleagues. The strategy of Springest, aiming to become " The amazon of Learning", was reshaped into becoming "The Learnest of all", everybody learns through Springest, that includes the Springeteers themselves.
In 2015, more recognition came, when Springest was indexed in the top 100 of “Unicorns”: the most scalable organisations in the world. We are listed next to companies such as Uber, AirBnB, Facebook, Google and Netflix. And again, we won the award for Beste Werkgever in 2015-2016!
2016 marked a year of growth and expansion: the team grew from 19 to 40 employees. Not only did our Go-team (corporate sales) grow, also the learning advisor-team saw exponential growth. Which also made our revenue increase with 50% in 2016.
The big leap to Germany was finally made. After years or running Springest.de from our HQ, a new office was established by Matt in Berlin, with our first German LA-hire in Berlin! The deal closed with Siemens DE, made us also establish a German company, so in October 2016, Springest GmbH was officially founded.
The year 2017 started off with more rewards. This time not first position, but Springest still ended up number 3 in the list of Best Employers New Hero's of NRC.
In March 2017 Springest became to big for the office at Rokin, so after more than 6 years in the epicentre of Amsterdam, Springest moved to the awesome Houthavens. A new more mature company, with a bigger team and way more space was born. At the same time, the German team in Berlin expanded to 3 FTE.
June 2017 was a big moment in Springest history: a new investment round came through via FD Mediagroep.
Another highlight of 2017 followed in the summer. We went on our first Workation! A week with the whole team, working in a villa in Spain and having great team outings and bonding moments. Here you find an article about it (in Dutch, sorry!).
In the meantime, the team keeps on expanding, with 6 FTE in Berlin and 43 in Amsterdam.
In May 2018 the 10 year anniversary of Springest was celebrated by a big SpringFest at the office.
What is the things you look most forward to, when it comes to learning & working at Springest?

When it comes to efficiency, it's better to just work through your task list and not spend to much time making overviews & priorities
- NOOO, always separate working from processing. So work pro-active: make overviews, make your own priorities, after that clean your inboxes and organise your work and only then start working. It costs some time, but it saves you a lot of time too, to become an efficient, productive GTD-master.
- Of course, I wanna work as quick as I can and do not want to get distracted with goals, overviews and priorities.
An introduction to Springest
Springest The Movie
You probably know what Springest is. You have had your trial day and checked us online (we sure hope so). Perhaps you have already seen some of our PR-videos there, if not, check it out:
Springest The Movie
You probably know what Springest is. You have had your trial day and checked us online (we sure hope so). Perhaps you have already seen some of our PR-videos there, if not, check it out:
Meet the team!
The Springest Family
The Springest team is growing, so it's hard to remember all names and faces in the beginning. Be smart and check out our "about page" to see who is who.
The Springest Family
The Springest team is growing, so it's hard to remember all names and faces in the beginning. Be smart and check out our "about page" to see who is who.
The Dev / Product circle
Springest is essentially a tech company and these are the heroes that build and maintain our platform and the features. They code in Ruby on Rails and if you are not a techie yourself, you will get an intro during your onboarding time at Springest with all the ins and outs on what they do.
The Dev / Product circle
Springest is essentially a tech company and these are the heroes that build and maintain our platform and the features. They code in Ruby on Rails and if you are not a techie yourself, you will get an intro during your onboarding time at Springest with all the ins and outs on what they do.
Provider Sales & Support
SHOW ME THE MONEYYYY!!! These are our dealmakers and the ones that make the providers on our platform happy, with their smiles, jokes and sales skills.
Provider Sales & Support
SHOW ME THE MONEYYYY!!! These are our dealmakers and the ones that make the providers on our platform happy, with their smiles, jokes and sales skills.
Organisations
Talking about the big bucks: meet team Go/Organisations. They are responsible for Springest Go: a learning portal build by Springest for big corporates in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and soon the whole world! Springest Go is a system through which employees of theses corporates like Siemens, PostNL, Bavaria, AEGON and ING can book their course and often Springest also processes the payments and invoicing for these deals.
Organisations
Talking about the big bucks: meet team Go/Organisations. They are responsible for Springest Go: a learning portal build by Springest for big corporates in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and soon the whole world! Springest Go is a system through which employees of theses corporates like Siemens, PostNL, Bavaria, AEGON and ING can book their course and often Springest also processes the payments and invoicing for these deals.
Learning Advisors
The biggest growing team at Springest! These lovely people really make Springest the Learnest Company, because they talk to the users/visitors of our website every day and help them find the right course.
Learning Advisors
The biggest growing team at Springest! These lovely people really make Springest the Learnest Company, because they talk to the users/visitors of our website every day and help them find the right course.
Springest Germany
Meet Springest DE! Since October 2016 Springest is officially a GmbH in Germany, with an office in Berlin. The focus of these cool Germans is on Provider sales and user support.
Springest Germany
Meet Springest DE! Since October 2016 Springest is officially a GmbH in Germany, with an office in Berlin. The focus of these cool Germans is on Provider sales and user support.
Smooth Operations
Basically all Springeteers are part of the Smooth Operations circle. Be it feeding the fishes, being a lunchbuddy, picking up bread on their way to the office, repairing stuff in the office, being GTD-masters, fixing Internet and sooo much more. The Smooth Operators together have the purpose of making Springeteers the most productive, happy, communicative and energetic people on earth!
Smooth Operations
Basically all Springeteers are part of the Smooth Operations circle. Be it feeding the fishes, being a lunchbuddy, picking up bread on their way to the office, repairing stuff in the office, being GTD-masters, fixing Internet and sooo much more. The Smooth Operators together have the purpose of making Springeteers the most productive, happy, communicative and energetic people on earth!
Finance
Masters of Coin, guarders of the Iron bank, Go invoice processors, strict but just. These spread sheet-lovers make sure we get more cash in than we spend and of course work hard to keep the accountants, the bank, our investors and (very important) your own bankaccount happy.
Finance
Masters of Coin, guarders of the Iron bank, Go invoice processors, strict but just. These spread sheet-lovers make sure we get more cash in than we spend and of course work hard to keep the accountants, the bank, our investors and (very important) your own bankaccount happy.
The Springest Code of Conduct
The Springest Code of Conduct
As a Springeteer, you need to work in an environment that makes you feel safe, free and able to reach your full potential. To safeguard this for all and ensure we work according to the principles of freedom, trust, integrity and equal chances, a code of conduct is written to inform you and set the expectations of Springest when it comes to employee behavior and corporate responsibility.Internally a code is crucial in protecting the Springest culture and make everyone feel welcome and included, but these rules are equally important when it comes to dealing with the outside world. As every employee is an ambassador and representative of the Springest brand, the code is also applicable to your behavior towards clients, partners and all other people you encounter during Springest employment.
Here you can find the Springest Code of Conduct.
Please read it carefully and ask any question you might have.
The Springest Code of Conduct
As a Springeteer, you need to work in an environment that makes you feel safe, free and able to reach your full potential. To safeguard this for all and ensure we work according to the principles of freedom, trust, integrity and equal chances, a code of conduct is written to inform you and set the expectations of Springest when it comes to employee behavior and corporate responsibility.Internally a code is crucial in protecting the Springest culture and make everyone feel welcome and included, but these rules are equally important when it comes to dealing with the outside world. As every employee is an ambassador and representative of the Springest brand, the code is also applicable to your behavior towards clients, partners and all other people you encounter during Springest employment.
Here you can find the Springest Code of Conduct.
Please read it carefully and ask any question you might have.