Your first few weeks on the job can set the tone for your relationship
with your boss throughout your entire stay at your new company. Handle
yourself well, and you can quickly start to be seen as a valued new
member of the team. But misstep, and your new boss might start wondering
if she should have hired you in the first place.
Here are nine ways you can go wrong in your first weeksat a new job.
1. Start out with all the answers. Your first few weeks
at a job are about learning how your new company works. If you come in
sure that you know everything and already raring to make changes before
you get to know the environment, the people, and how and why they do
things, you risk looking naive and arrogant.
2. Come in late, leave early or miss work in your first few weeks. When
you first start a job, people don't know much about you, so everything
you do takes on more meaning. If you come in late, leave early or take
time off early on, you're more likely to raise fears that you're a
slacker than if you do the same thing once you've establisheda track record as
a strong and reliable worker. (Obviously, there are exceptions to this,
such as if you have a legitimate medical need or early arranged time
off as part of your offer negotiations.)
3. Ask to work from home right away. As with coming in
late or leaving early, this can be OK to do once you've established a
track record of good work. But if you ask for it too soon, you're more
likely to look like you're focused on ways not to be at work than on the
work itself.
4. Get involved in office drama.While getting drawn
into office drama never looks good, it will reflect even worse on you if
you jump into it while you're new. Plus, at this stage, you don't know
enough to take sides, and you could be aligning yourself with the office
complainers or slackers without realizing it. So be friendly to
everyone, and stay neutral when it comes to any office factions.
5. Appear bored or disengaged.Managers wantpeople
around who are glad to be there and truly engaged in the work they're
doing. You might not always love your job, but if you already appear
bored in your first few weeks, your new boss is going to wonder if
you're regretting taking the job -- and if she should be regretting
hiring you.
6. Ignore the culture. Cultural fit is hugely important
and can hold you back just as much as a lack of skills can. If the
culture is neurotically on time for meetings and you stroll in late, or
if most people stay focused on their work while you're chatting up a
storm, you can quickly come across as tone-deaf.
7. Don't pay attention while you're being trained. Few
people can remember everything they're told in their first weeks on the
job, so if you don't appear to be engaged in your training, you're
likely to send off alarm bells for your boss and new co-workers. Make
sure that you're paying attention, taking notes, asking questions when
something isn't quite clear and periodically checking to be sure your understanding is correct.
8. Appear overwhelmed. To be clear, feelingoverwhelmed
when you start a new job is normal. You're having loads of new
information thrown at you, and you won't be able to retain it all. But
if you appear to be knocked off balance or second-guessing your decision
to take the job, you won't inspire confidence in your new boss.
Instead, show that you can handle new situations with a reasonable
degree of calm.
9. Compare things to "how we did it at my old job." It might feel like you have a better way of doing things, but if you jump in with comparisonsbefore
getting to know why your new workplace does things differently, you're
likely to miss reasons why those ideas wouldn't work here or finding out
that the ideas have been tried previously. And your new co-workers are
likely to find constant remarks about "how we did it at my old job"
irritating more quickly than you might think.
10.Discussing your Take home.
It is true that the main reason of taking a job is to be able to offset
your bills and take care of your needs,but being too conscious of your
pay and always talking about it might send a wrong signal to your boss.
Keep striving to get there.
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